


Rocky Ground

by Narsil



Series: The Raven [2]
Category: Ah! Megami-sama! | Oh My Goddess!, Ranma 1/2, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:09:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narsil/pseuds/Narsil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ranma, now Raven, is again enjoying the joys of childhood only this time with mothers that actually care about her and grandparents that dote on her.  Unfortunately, her inheritance from her new "father" Trigon makes her too dangerous to be around other children for long, and she's beginning to remember what it was like to be Ranma....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Assignments

Under an obscuration spell, Hild reached up to run a finger along the top of Thought's feathered head as she glanced over at the four goddesses hidden from mortal sight by Lind’s own spell. The four goddesses were watching Kasumi and Nabiki walk away with their new baby, Skuld leaning against Belldandy with her older sister’s arms around her. The tears running down the youngest Norn’s face were evidence that the support was not simply because of the exhaustion obvious on the faces and in the postures of all three. Even the famously stoic Lind seemed pensive. Hild was her normal cheerful self. At least, she hoped she was — she had a reputation to maintain, after all. And speaking of her reputation, it was time to put on the act.

“Well, _that_ was fun,” she chirped, turning to stride away from the goddesses. “Tell my ex that I’ll be in touch.”

“ ‘In touch’?” Urd repeated, suspicion clear in her tone. “About what?”

Hild turned around to smile cheerfully back at Lind and the Norns. “Why, about who will raise little Raven, of course.” Her smile broadened at the dumbfounded looks on the faces of her daughter and Skuld. Even Lind reacted, her hands going white from the strength of her grip on the haft of her poleax. Belldandy was her usual serene self ... but was that a touch of amusement? _Yes, she knows._ “What, did you think I wouldn’t want something for giving up my newest Fury?”

“But ... but the world ...” Skuld stammered.

“I know, I know, it’s as much my world as anyone else’s, I’m not going to do anything to destroy it,” Hild said airily, waving off the young goddess’s objection. “Still, I’m due _something_ for my cooperation, and that’s my price.” Glancing at Urd, she added, “I enjoyed our little mother/daughter time, we’ll have to do it again sometime.” And with another cheery wave, she resumed her exit. She needed to get to her office quickly, and its privacy. She had a few questions for her former husband....

/oOo\

“Kami-sama will see you now.”

Those words jolted Urd from her doze, and she shot upright in her chair — her _very comfortable_ chair — in the waiting room to her father’s office. Sighing, she rubbed at her face. She was still exhausted from the afternoon, and had been looking forward to something of a binge when they got home. But when they finally arrived back at the temple after their abortive side trip to pick up some ice cream for Skuld, Keichii had been waiting with a message for her and Lind that her Father wanted to see them ... immediately. She’d managed to down a few glasses (okay, mugs) of sake before the two had answered the summons, but either not enough or too much, depending on how one looked at it.

And then, of course, when they’d arrived they’d been asked to wait for a few minutes. Unlike mortal waiting rooms, it actually had been only a few minutes.

Beside her, Lind caught her elbow as she staggered slightly when she forced herself to her feet — and without the look of disapproval Urd normally would have expected of the stern Goddess of the Ax. Instead, the Valkyrie simply waited until she was certain her fellow goddess was securely on her feet then practically escorted her into Kami-sama’s office.

Urd’s father was apparently in an especially strong “kindly old man” mood, sitting in a recliner away from his desk by a cheery fireplace, sipping from a glass, feet propped up on a foot stool, waiting for the two goddesses. As they approached, he waved them to a curved couch across from him. It was immediately obviously where each goddess was supposed to sit by their favorite snacks and drinks waiting on the side tables at each end.

Once Lind made sure Urd was settled, leaned her poleax against the wall and sat down herself, Kami-sama set aside his glass on his own side table. “First, well done, both of you. The situation with the Demon’s Seed is working out as well as we can expect, and much of that is because of how well the two of you played your parts.”

Lind simply nodded her thanks, but Urd’s eyes fell as she blushed, the memory flashing across her mind of Lind flying across the park to intercept Raven’s final strike at Akane while she sat dithering in a tree.

She felt her father’s gaze like a weight. “Urd,” he said softly. She reluctantly looked up, at eyes holding no reproach at all. “You did well,” he repeated with a gentle smile, “and your file will reflect that.”

Urd finally sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded. “Thank you, father,” she replied, giving him a somewhat watery smile of her own.

Kami-sama let the moment linger for a minute, before nodding. “So we’ve started well, but to continue well we need to see to it that our little Raven is raised properly. Hild has already contacted me, and I have agreed with her suggestion. Raven will have three parents, one of Hild’s choice, one of my own, and one we jointly agree to. Hild has chosen Mara — something about putting her where she could do more good and less harm.” He smiled as the two goddesses chuckled, Urd remembering some of the Norns’ encounters with her childhood friend. Once the chuckles died away he continued, “Lind, you are my choice.”

Lind stiffened in her seat. “Me! ?” she squeaked (something Urd wasn’t sure she believed she’d actually heard). “But ... but I’m not —”

“Not the mothering type, no,” Kami-sama broke in to say. “I don’t expect you will be the one Raven goes to for comfort. But while she will be either too young or too occupied with mastering her powers to relearn martial arts except as a meditation aid, she _is_ going to need to learn self-control, and for that you are perfect.”

Lind stared at him before finally nodding, shoulders slumping. “True,” she agreed with a sigh.

“Now, Lind, it wouldn’t be as bad as you’re afraid of,” Kami-sama said soothingly. “Yes, you’d need to share living quarters with Raven’s co-mothers so she will accept you. Yes, that would mean sharing your home with a demon. But it would only be for a short time. As well, your major parenting responsibilities won’t begin for years. There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to maintain your current responsibilities for a time, and even later only decrease them rather than end them altogether. Will you accept?”

The purple-haired goddess had perked up at his words, and she nodded firmly. “I will.”

Urd had been listening to the conversation with dawning horror. She did _not_ like where this was leading, and at this point could think of only one reason why her father would have asked her to join this particular meeting. Though why her and not Belldandy ...

Kami-sama now turned his attention to his daughter. “Urd, your mother suggested, and I agreed, that you would be an excellent choice for the third —”

“No!” Urd shot to her feet, the faint haze over her thinking blown away by her anger. A tiny part of her was warning her that she was shouting at her _Father_ , but she was too furious to care. “I don’t know what game Hild is playing at, but I am _not_ going to spend two decades on babysitting duty! I cannot believe that you would choose me over someone like Belldandy! ...”

Kami-sama simply listened to his daughter’s ranting for a few minutes, before turning his focus to a stiff-faced Valkyrie doing her best not to cringe. “Lind, would you excuse us? I would like to speak with my daughter in private.”

“Of course,” Lind responded gratefully, and rose to grab her poleax and practically run from the room. Kami-sama watched her go, then turned back to his daughter.

Urd’s rant slammed to a stop as she abruptly found herself floating in a formless, infinite void, surrounded by what felt like enough power to move worlds, all focused on _her_. Then she was back in the office, on her knees, hugging herself and gasping. “My apologies for the fright, Urd-chan,” she faintly heard her Father say, “but in your anger you would have continued for quite some time — you have a rather extensive and varied vocabulary.” She lifted into the air and floated over to her place on the couch, and a glass made its way to her hand. She gulped down the contents, thinking distantly that that was no way to treat sake of that quality — even if the glass refilled itself as soon as she emptied it.

Finally, she shuddered and set aside the glass as she looked up into eyes filled with understanding compassion. “Better?” he asked. When she nodded, he smiled. “Good. Now, you are, of course, free to turn down the assignment. As with your assignment this afternoon, nothing will go in your file, and I’ll ask Lind not to speak of it. However, there are two points you should consider before you make your decision.

“First, Belldandy is not available for this task. It will be years before Raven has enough control to be trusted around mortals,” — Urd shuddered, remembering how baby Raven had woken up and gotten fussy at the ice cream emporium, and how after their exertions that afternoon the goddesses had barely had the speed to prevent a serious mess — “and your sister has her own assignment on Midgard that has decades yet to go. But even if she was available, she would _not_ be a better choice as Raven’s mother. Certainly there is no one more nurturing and understanding, but she is also too accepting of things as they are. Understandable, considering that she is the Norn of the Present — the present is as it is — but it is still a flaw, one I am happy to see losing its grip on her during her present assignment. You, on the other hand, are more proactive, and Raven is going to need your example in the years ahead as she deals with her slowly awakening memories. Then there is your dual nature — I can think of no one that better understands what Raven will be going through as she struggles with her own nature.”

Urd slumped down where she sat, feeling her stomach sink, then picked up the glass and once again gulped it empty. She had never managed to win an argument with her Father before on the few occasions she had tried, and she had no idea why she’d thought she might now. For a moment, her mind flashed back to a redhead telling her raven-haired love that it was for the whole world — a world that included Keiichi and all the other mortals she had come to know. “All right,” she said, sounding defeated. “I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. I know this isn’t how you were planning to spend the next few years, but I think you will find the time spent as rewarding as any you have ever experienced.” Rising to his feet, Kami-sama offered her a hand, then when she took it pulled her to her feet and into a hug. “I love you, Little One,” he murmured into her ear.

“I know ... Daddy. I love you, too,” the platinum-haired demon/goddess replied.

They stood there for several minutes, before Kami-sama broke the embrace. “Now, go get some rest. And don’t worry about the next few weeks, the three of you will have all the help from both Asgard and Niflheim you could possibly want. Call in the morning and we’ll set up a joint meeting to discuss the details. And I think that I’ll have Belldandy stay with you for awhile, to help you adjust to your new responsibilities.”

Urd nodded, leaned forward to kiss her Father on the cheek, and turned for the door. So, Belldandy to help them get started and all the resources of Heaven and Hell at her ... their disposal? Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad, after all....

/\

As the door closed behind the departing Norn of the Past, the obscuration field over the corner of the room dropped to reveal the Daimakaicho of Niflheim rising from another recliner there. The usually perky diminutive platinum blonde strode out to join her ex-husband, wiping at wet eyes. Kami-sama sat down on the couch, and Hild plopped down to curl up next to him, laying her head on his shoulders and sighing contentedly as an arm circled her shoulders. “You actually pulled it off. I wasn’t sure you would,” Hild said, voice shaky.

“You mean you refused to hope I could pull it off,” Kami-sama riposted gently. “I never had a doubt — our daughter is simply the best person for the job, and once she realized that her acceptance was inevitable. But you aren’t going to be able to take advantage of the ‘visitation rights’ you’re going to insist on as often as you’d like.”

“If I did that, I’d move in with them and never leave,” Hild grumbled. For a few minutes the couple simply enjoyed each other’s presence, until finally Hild asked, “Do you really think Urd will accept my offer?”

Kami-sama was silent for a long moment, before sighing. “Our daughter may not have her sister’s ability to love the entire world, but those she does accept into her heart, she loves with everything she has — and she is going to spend years supporting soon-to-be-her little Raven as the child relives all the pain and torture inflicted on Ranma by those that should have loved him in her dreams, ending with her time in Niflheim. Yes, Frigg, I believe she will ultimately accept your offer. I will miss her, but she’ll be able to make the same discreet visits that you do. And I suspect I’ll get a consolation prize out of this.”

Hild giggled. “Yes. Mara has power and skill, but her heart has never really been in her work. After years of motherhood along with up-close, long-term exposure to Lind, Urd, and the others that will be dropping in from time to time — she should make you an excellent goddess.” She felt Kami-sama’s own chuckle where her cheek rested on his chest.

Taking in a deep breath, she disengaged from her ex-husband’s embrace and rose to her feet. “Now, I’d better get back to Niflheim and start making my own arrangements. I am _so_ looking forward to Mara’s reaction to her new assignment.” She bent over to kiss him on the lips. “Love you, Odin,” she murmured. Straightening, she strode over to a wall, murmured a phrase in a language that had died with the previous Earth, waited a moment as another obscuration spell shattered to reveal the human-sized black oval on the wall, then stepped through and was gone.


	2. Growing Pains

“So you’re really leaving.”

Urd, unusually dressed for once in simple (if tight) jeans and a T-shirt, looked from where she and a similarly dressed Mara were packing the last of her potions supplies to find her apparently early-teenaged, raven-haired sister standing in the doorway. (Not being exhausted the previous day, the Norn of the Past’s childhood friend had already moved into their new home in a pocket dimension attached to both Asgard and Midgard. She had volunteered to help Urd pack, muttering something about avoiding babysitting duty as long as possible.)

“Yeah, duty calls,” Urd replied nonchalantly. “Looks like you’ll get the TV to yourself instead of always losing it to me.”

“As if,” Skuld retorted, smirking ... though her chin was trembling suspiciously.

Urd glanced over at the tanned, blonde demon, and decided she could trust Mara to handle the last few bottles without breaking them; she’d already taken care of the really important items herself, anyway. Walking past her sister, she ordered, “Come here, Squirt.” She suppressed a sigh when Skuld just followed along without yelling at her for the disparaging label — Skuld really was taking her leaving badly.

The platinum blonde goddess led her younger sister into her own room, then turned to face her. “Okay, Skuld, I know just what your second thought was when you heard I was leaving,” she said, and Skuld stiffened at her older sister’s serious tone. “With me out of the way, you’ll have a clear shot at breaking up Bell and Keiichi.” The young goddess scowled even as she blushed, but before she could say anything Urd overrode her. “It’s not happening. First, I’ve already had a talk with Keiichi and if anything will _finally_ get that boy — that young man — to get off his butt and set a date it’s the possible end of the world.

“ _Second_ ,” she continued over Skuld’s angry growl, “I’ve _also_ had a talk with Peorth, and she’s promised to keep an eye on you. She may not be around as much as I was, but I suspect her response to any stunts you pull will be even more embarrassing than mine.”

“But that’s not fair!” Skuld burst out, pouting.

Urd laughed. “ ‘Fair’ has nothing to do with it, kiddo,” she retorted. “That pair belongs together for as long as Keiichi’s lifespan allows, and by now you’re the only one that doesn’t accept it.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I believe Keiichi and I can take care of our own relationship.”

The two goddesses whirled to find their smiling sister standing in the doorway, the gray-skinned, raven-haired form of little Raven in her arms. She continued, “Besides, I already spoke with him about it before you two got up this morning, and he said he’d find out what days next month would be best for his family and friends to attend our wedding.”

The other two Norns stared, gaping. Finally, Urd burst out, “Then why didn’t he _say_ anything when I talked to him? !”

“Did you give him a chance? Or did you simply give him thinly veiled orders?” Belldandy shook her head disapprovingly when her older sister blushed, then started gently bouncing Raven when the baby started to fuss. “Come along, sisters, it’s time to go. Mara is finished packing, and we need to take the limiters off Raven as soon as possible.”

“Right,” Urd agreed. She glanced down to find her little sister trying to put on a nonchalant expression ... but the chin quiver was back. “Hey, kiddo, remember how I said breaking up Bell and Keiichi was the second thought you had?” When Skuld nodded suspiciously, she ruffled the young goddess’s hair. “I’m going to miss having you around, too.”

“Yeah, right, like I’m gonna ... gonna m-m-miss ...” The raven-haired child-goddess threw her arms around her eldest sister and buried her face against Urd’s T-shirt.

Urd sighed and circled her arms around her sister’s shoulder. _Sorry, kid, but life is change, as much for us as for mortals._ “Of course you won’t,” she murmured. The two stood there for several minutes before Urd reluctantly broke the embrace. “Come on, Sprout, we’re keeping Belldandy waiting.” Skuld’s older sisters carefully ignored as she scrubbed at wet cheeks and the two joined their sister, Urd glancing around pensively as Belldandy led them toward the gate.

/oOo\

_Three years later:_

“But mommy, I’m tired! I wanna go park!”

“I know, Kitling,” Lind replied from the cushion where she sat across from her daughter, looking up from the smooth crystal she held in her cupped hands. “We will. You just need to finish the practice first. You almost had it. Let’s try again, and as soon as you do it we’ll go.”

Raven pouted but finally gave Momma Lind the smile that always made her ‘glow’ even brighter and said, “Okay.”

The dusky-skinned three-year-old tucked her legs across each other as her Momma Lind had shown her and closed her eyes, and this time Momma Lind began murmuring. The quiet one of her three mommies was talking about snow fields, clear meadows, quiet ponds, and other stuff Raven didn’t really understand, but she let the sound of her mommy’s words wash over her as she tried to think of nothing.

At first, memories of her day so far with Momma Lind interfered — playing with her crayons and coloring book while Momma Lind danced with her long stick, sitting in her lap while her mommy read to her out of a picture book, running to catch a ball her mommy would roll out and kick it back — but now she was in the long quiet time that she hated where her mommy didn’t want her to nap, but didn’t want her to _do_ anything. And it had been a long day, and she was feeling a little drowsy, and the stream of meaningless words from her mommy washed over her, and she could feel her mommy’s love reaching out to surround her and she sank into it like a warm blanket....

/\

As Raven closed her eyes, Lind looked back down at the scan crystal in her hands and the shape of their little girl floating in its clear depths. She fought to stay calm, to keep away her frustration as she watched the dark tendrils of energy radiate out in all directions from the rotating form, undulating as if carried by a breeze, reaching out to caress everything in the room — which wasn’t much: Lind herself (though never quite connecting with the Valkyrie, repelled by her own divine essence), the crystal in her hands, a few pillows, and the bare walls. The power Raven had inherited with her demonic half, connecting to the world around her — and the conduits of her anger.

Up until that day Raven had shown no progress at all at keeping her emotions in check, keeping them from mixing with the power exploring her surroundings, but today something seemed to have clicked and time after time the darkness in the tendrils visible in the crystal had faded, sometimes to only a faint tinge. But every time Raven would almost reach complete clarity, she would lose concentration — complain about being bored, ask when they were going to the park, whine about wanting to see her friends, or (the last few times) doze off. And she was so close!

_Maybe she needs some motivation,_ the Valkyrie thought, _a reminder of the places we can take her if she can control herself._ She started talking of the beauties of Earth that Raven would see, her attention drifting as she daydreamed of their little raven-haired, dusky-skinned bundle of joy building sandcastles on a sparkling beach, playing hide-and seek with her mothers in a green forest silent except for birdsong and laughter, a snowball fight on a foothill of a majestic mountain.

As Lind described all her favorite vacation spots in loving detail, she fought to keep her eagerness in check as again in her crystal the darkness permeating Raven’s power faded, more ... more ... Then the undulating ribbons flashed white, a clear pure glow racing down their length to light up the crystal, and Lind bounced to her feet and pumped a fist in the air. “Yes! You did it!” she shouted as she grabbed up Raven and swung her around, laughing.

/\

Raven was confused. One moment she had been drifting, mesmerized by her mother’s voice, practically asleep, and the next she was swept up from where she sat, whirling in a circle with her Momma Lind laughing like the little girl had never heard her laugh before, blazing with happy love.

Then the moment was over, Raven was back on the floor (and a little dizzy), and Momma Lind was back to her usual quiet calm — except that she felt kinda like Momma Urd did when Momma Mara whispered in her ear. Momma Lind was turning a little red like Momma Urd did, too.

Raven started giggling.

Though Momma Lind felt even more like Momma Urd (and her face was getting redder, too), all she said was, “You did very well, Kitling, we’re done for the day. Let’s go to the park.”

/oOo\

Urd looked up from her seat at the table when Mara stepped into the kitchen. The goddess/demon had an open can of sake in one hand, several unopened cans in front of her and a scattering of empty cans across the table’s surface. “You’re home early,” she said.

The tanned platinum blonde demon’s eyebrows rose at the sight, then she shrugged and walked over to open the fridge and grab a can of her favorite beer. “No point in hanging around in Niflheim after work,” she said, opening the can and taking a long swig. “They’re all assholes, anyway.”

Urd’s gaze sharpened at the comment. As formerly one of Asgard’s top systems administrators, she had some idea of how important fun time together could be for teambuilding — though in the case of Niflheim it was probably more about keeping an eye on the competition and watching out for knives in the back. But after a moment, she let it go. _Her business, and Hild’s — she does work for the opposition, after all, however much fun it’s been to have her around without worrying about clashing agendas._ “Watch your language even when Raven’s not around,” she warned, “or you’re bound to slip up when she _is_ around.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mother,” she replied, and plopped down in another seat at the table. “So what are you doing here? I thought you’d be in your laboratory working on orders.”

“I’m waiting for Lind to get back from the park with Raven,” Urd said shortly, lifting her can to take a gulp.

“I see.” Mara glanced over the empty cans and suppressed a sigh. This had been building for years, ever since Raven had moved beyond a sometimes smiling, sometimes cranky cute blob of flesh that inhaled food through one end and expelled the resulting waste products out the other to take on more of her own personality. The resulting cheerful, helpful (at least Raven thought so), creative baby girl _had_ to be all Ranma — any personality Raven might have inherited through the shard of Trigon’s soul didn’t bear thinking about, though it might come through a little in her occasional brief but intense flashes of anger (fortunately, the trio’s budget for replacing what their daughter destroyed during those episodes was unlimited, and the three had been only slightly battered before they learned the warning signs). Belldandy believed that was just the natural anger of any child, expressed through more power than any child should have, though Mara had her doubts.

_But that’s not what’s bothering Urd, is it? No, Urd’s problem is Lind. Though it might be_ Lind’s _problem._ “If I’m early, Lind’s late, isn’t she?” the demon asked. “I’d have thought she’d be back from the park hours ago.” _Oops, wrong question to ask,_ she thought as Urd’s expression darkened.

She was trying to think of something to say to short-circuit the impending explosion when they heard the chime signaling someone arriving at the front gate, followed by the sound of the front door opening and closing. A few moments later Lind appeared in the doorway, the dusky-skinned child in her arms with her head on the Valkyrie’s shoulder, the velvet choker and wrist bands the child wore stained with sweat. The sleeping Raven started to shift in Lind’s arms, making a fussing sound under what Mara assumed had to be an onslaught of the tension that instantly filled the room.

Mara leaped to her feet and hastened around the table to the newcomers. “Here, let me have her, I’ll get the limiters off and put her to bed. Her bath can wait until morning for once.” She carefully shifted the sleeping child to her own embrace, then frowned at — to her skilled sight — a visibly relieved Lind. “What were you thinking, taking her to the park this late? It’s too early, she’s going to wake up and be up half the night, then stumble through the day tomorrow.”

Lind shrugged, though a faint blush tinged her cheeks. “I promised her that she could go to the park once she accomplished today’s lesson. It took her much longer than I expected, but eventually her performance was satisfactory.”

Mara’s frown deepened. “Yes, but —” She broke off as Raven shifted in her arms. “We’ll finish this after I get Raven settled.” She turned and hurried from the room.

Behind her, a tense silence filled the kitchen as Urd finished off her can and Lind opened the fridge for a bottle of her own beverage of choice (a local ambrosia — nonintoxicating of course, even on detached duty, as a Valkyrie Lind always considered herself on call). Urd waited until Lind as taken her first sip from her bottle, then asked, “So when are you going to take that stick out of your ass?”

Lind’s mouthful sprayed across the room. “What? !” she shouted, wiping at her mouth.

Urd gulped down the last of her can and slammed it down on the table. “You heard me. ‘Eventually her performance was satisfactory’, was that what you told Raven when she finally measured up to your standards?”

Lind carefully put her bottle down on the counter beside the fridge and crossed her arms. “I was chosen for this assignment by Kami-sama to train Raven in meditation and teach her to control her powers, and that is what I am doing.”

“What Kami-sama chose you for was to be one of Raven’s _mothers_ , not her _drill instructer_!” Urd retorted. “She’s a mortal child, not one of your Valkyrie trainees —”

“ _Half_ -mortal,” Lind broke in, “and she _has_ to learn to control her demonic inheritance or Midgard dies!”

“And do you think it’s going to be your meditation techniques that are going to do that? Or will it be her love for us and that sheer determination not to lose whatever the cost that that bastard of a father somehow taught him along with her sense of honor? But she isn’t going to have either if you push her till she breaks while barely acknowledging she exists outside of training and your turn to take her to the park. Why don’t you try treating her like a daughter instead of a recruit and —”

“Urd, Lind, enough!”

The two goddesses had been so caught up in their confrontation that neither had noticed Mara’s return. Nor had a demon finding herself living on the outskirts of Asgard spoken with so much steel in her voice in the three years they’d been rooming together. For a moment Lind and Urd were shocked into silence, and Mara hurried to take advantage of the pause in the argument.

“I could hear you two all the way down the hall. I suppose we could use the emotional backlash from the clashing egos to wake Raven up and keep her that way until her usual bedtime,” she continued, then smiled briefly as the other two blushed and looked down at the table. “Better.”

Turning to her occasional lover, she said, “Urd, you’re forgetting that Raven’s an empath, she _knows_ how Lind feels about her, how much she loves her, the same way she knows how much _you_ love her. Different people show how they feel in different ways, but from the way Raven acts you know how Lind feels about her. Raven gets plenty of touchy-feely mothering from you and me.”

Urd opened her mouth, but paused at Mara’s stern look and finally nodded, shamefaced.

“Good for _you_ , Urd!” Mara enthused in the same tone she used with Raven when playing her learning games. Her startled friend laughed, and Mara grinned before putting on a mock-stern look and shaking a finger at her. “But look at all those empty sake cans! You _know_ you aren’t supposed to drink like that at home. Now clean up your mess and either finish the job somewhere else or sleep it off. I _really_ suggest you don’t trying filling any of your potions orders right now even if you can still walk in a straight line.”

Blushing again even more furiously than before, Urd hastily rose and grabbed the nearby trash receptacle. She swept the empty cans from the table into it to vanish in dim flashes of light, put the receptacle back and said, “I’ll be in my room catching up on some magazine subscriptions.” Then she strode through the doorway and was gone.

The other two watched her go, and Lind relaxed only to stiffen at Mara’s next words: “Urd’s right, you know. You’re pushing too hard.”

Unlike Urd, Mara’s tone had been calm, reasonable, and Lind forced herself to ignore that they were coming from a demon. It wasn’t like Mara had actually done anything since they’d moved in together to merit her distrust—except for seducing Urd, of course. _Not that she had to work hard at it,_ she though sourly, knowing even as she did that she wasn’t being precisely fair — the two _were_ old friends, after all. But the fact that Mara _was_ a demon simply didn’t sit well with the Valkyrie (once and future Valkyrie, it felt like sometimes, with her boring patrols and side assignment as a trainer) however much she had reluctantly come to like Hild’s cheery underling. _Their business, not yours,_ she reminded herself yet again as she took another swig from her bottle.

“We have only a handful of years before Trigon activates his ‘portal’,” she said. “We need to get Raven as ready as we can if this is going to work.”

“Actually, we have a double handful of years; if Raven isn’t ready by the time she remembers Ranma’s death I doubt she ever will be — which is why you’re pushing too hard, we’ll lose years if Raven breaks under the strain. And even if she can recover, how fragile will that make her when she remembers the Wall?”

Lind opened her mouth, paused, then finally shrugged slightly, rebuttal unsaid. “I will consider your words,” she said instead.

Mara kept her triumphant grin off her face — another successful seduction. _Urd may style herself a goddess of love, but_ I’m _the professional._ “That’s all I ask,” she said, opening the fridge for another can of beer.

/oOo\

_Three years later:_

Urd paused momentarily at the sound of someone clearing her throat, then resumed carefully pouring the last of the powdered asphrodel into the cauldron. She was at the final stage, and this rush order had jumped to the head of the list for her growing home business. She carefully stirred the mixture six times counterclockwise, then stepped back as a puff of smoke burst up to form a tiny mushroom-shaped cloud. Hastily grabbing up a pair of hot pads, she removed the cauldron from its burner and set it on a stand to cool, then finally turned to the door to find Mara leaning against the frame. The platinum blonde demon/goddess lifted one eyebrow. “You’re back early,” she said in the English they had decided would be their ‘home’ language. It was currently the unofficial world language of Earth, and Raven had been picking up Japanese a bit from the dreams reliving her earliest memories as Ranma.

Mara grimaced, unconsciously hugging herself. “That particular parliamentarian proved to be unusually corruptible. It didn’t take anything more than a little push.”

Urd kept her own expression of distaste off her face, as she thought of just what that ‘little push’ entailed — she knew which bed she was going to be spending the night in, that of her ‘friend with benefits’. _At least Mother seems to be easing Mara out of the_ really _ugly stuff,_ Urd thought. _How did she put it? ‘A happy temptress is a productive temptress’, and Mara hasn’t been enjoying her work for a while, now._ It still felt odd for the demon/goddess hybrid to acknowledge her relationship to Hild, but after one of ‘Grandma’s’ infrequent visits Raven had asked why Urd didn’t call her ‘Mom’. The little half-demon had been cutely serious when she had ordered her Mama Urd to start when she didn’t have a reason she was willing to share, though the little girl had been willing to settle for ‘Mother’ instead.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Mara continued, straightening, “Raven’s meditation time with Lind is almost over, and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten that it’s your turn to take her to the park.”

“I only did that the once,” Urd groused as she put a lid on the cauldron.

Mara smirked. “Right, and at least three times that was because I reminded you.”

“Well, this isn’t one of them. See? Potion preparation complete, all that’s needed is for it to cool off and settle for the rest of the afternoon, and I still have ... five minutes.” She glanced over at the diamond-tattooed demon and suppressed a frown — Mara was still looking a little haunted, that assignment must have been worse than usual. But the last time she had mentioned anything about her friend’s work out loud, Mara had gotten all huffy.... “Would you care to join us?” she asked nonchalantly.

Mara brightened at the unexpected offer — the weekly park time, watching Raven play with the littlest gods and goddesses followed by eating out together, had come to be treasured by all three of her adopted mothers as alone time with their joint ward. “I suppose I can work it into my busy schedule,” she replied, shrugging. “Are you going to ask Lind as well?”

“No point, she has patrol duty as soon as she’s finished with Raven.” Mara’s question had _not_ been a surprise, not anymore — though in the early days of clashing egos and worldviews in enforced company, the fact that the demon had turned out to be the compromiser that kept Lind and Urd balanced _had_ been a surprise.

Urd set a countdown timer and ushered Mara out of her laboratory before turning to lock the heavily reinforced door. Having Raven’s out-of-control power knock in the previous more normal door — and devastate pretty much everything inside the room — once had been enough. “Let’s collect the limiters and Raven and be on our way.”

/\

_That evening:_

Raven hugged her little stuffed angel Shadowlight, with one white wing and one black like Mama Urd’s angel (a gift from Auntie Bell and Uncle Keiichi). She smiled as Mama Mara turned out the light and closed the door behind her, leaving only a dim nightlight bobbing above the small demon/human hybrid’s bed. The day had been one of the bestest ever! Mama Lind had actually said she was getting pretty good at keeping herself calm and controlling her powers, and her best friend Glaedir had been at the park when she’d arrived with _both_ Mama Urd and Mama Mara (she ignored how much she hated how the limiters made her feel sluggish and heavy, at least she got to play with other kids), and the dinner afterward had been her favorite meal at her favorite eatery.

And now she would get to go to sleep and dream about being the little boy that her mothers insisted was actually her. Not that she was sure she believed it, however much the dreams felt like memories — she was a _girl_ after all, and Ranma seemed a little stupid and didn’t read books at all. Ranma couldn’t _feel_ people the same way she could, either.

And the funny man that was the boy’s father would be in the dreams, too. Raven frowned — her mothers didn’t like that man at all, she could feel it whenever she mentioned him to them, but _she_ thought he was funny anyway.

Yawning, she watched the bobbing and weaving nightlight as her eyelids grew heavy. As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what weird game Genma would come up with tonight.

/\

The first shriek yanked Urd out of a satiated doze and had her rolling out of Mara’s bed before she was really aware of what she’d heard. She was fully awake for the _second_ shriek, though — Raven, heard through the spell that performed the same function as mortal baby monitors. Ignoring her robe, she rushed out the door and down the hall, an equally naked Mara right behind her even as a nightgowned Lind joined them from her own bedroom.

Urd threw open the door to their daughter’s bedroom and stepped into complete chaos. Raven was writhing on her bed, tangling herself up in her sheets while the room tore itself apart around — tiny chairs and table, toy chest, clothes drawer, all hammered apart and toys, clothes and pieces of the shattered furniture hurling around the room. Even the bed glowed with Raven’s signature black light as it lifted off the ground and began to shake, and their little girl was bleeding from where chunks of wood had hit her.

Even as Urd waved a hand to deflect several more chunks away from a still-shrieking Raven, Mara stepped around her and reached toward the girl only to be jerked to a halt by Lind grabbing her arm. She whirled on the Valkyrie to find her watching the toys and furniture shards whirling about the room.

“No, this has to be the Cat Fist training — memory, not dream,” Lind said as she knocked another piece of debris away from the bed. “If you wake her up early, she’ll be right back in that pit the next time she goes to sleep. Keep the bed stable, protect her from what she’s throwing around, keep her asleep, and wait it out.”

Mara froze for a split-second, then snarled in frustration as she turned back around to Raven. She placed her hands on the still-shaking bed now at waist level, and a glow spread from her palms to spread out and around the bed, chasing away the blackness. The bed slowing sank, the shaking easing off. Once it was back on the floor she sat down on it and gently pulled the rhythmically shrieking child into her lap, pinning her arms to her side. Urd and Lind stepped over beside them, one on each side facing outward as Lind’s two one-winged angels, Spear Mint and Cool Mint, and Urd’s black- and-white-winged World of Elegance manifested, the angels’ faces grim as they also began to fend off debris.

“That monster threw Ranma into the pit eight times, right?” Lind asked as she grabbed Shadowlight out of the air and tucked the stuffed angel down the front of her nightgown before knocking away a piece of dresser.

“Right,” Urd replied, voice shaking.

/\

Long hours later, the breathy hiss that was all that was left of Raven’s screaming eased away and Urd and Lind slumped in relief as the shattered and torn furniture, toys and clothes settled to the floor for the last time. If they had been human, they would have been literally soaked in sweat. As it was, Urd felt the thirst for sake — lots of sake — like a near-overwhelming need burning at her core. And it was going to be long hours before she got enough to matter.

She and Lind turned to face the bed, to find an equally weary Mara still holding their little girl. Raven had relaxed from her taut-muscled writhing and was now shifting and making a sound that would probably be catlike if her throat hadn’t been long stripped raw. The two goddesses sat on the bed, each taking one of Raven’s hands as their angels leaned over the dusky child and began singing a soft, wordless lullaby. Raven finally went limp.

Urd whispered, “Keep her asleep a little longer. I’ll be right back.” She withdrew a reluctant World of Elegance back into her core, and rose to hurry from the room as fast as her exhaustion allowed.

A few minutes later she was back, now wearing her robe, with Mara’s robe over one shoulder and a bottle and a cup in her hands.

Glancing around the trashed room, she opened the bottle and poured half a glass of a purplish, smoky liquid before setting the bottle on the floor. “Here,” she said, sitting on the bed and handing the cup to Mara as World of Elegance again sprang out from her back and rejoined the other angels’ lullaby. “Wake up Raven and get her to drink this. Lind, grab a shoulder.”

“What is it?” Mara asked, holding the cup gingerly — not that she thought Urd would give their child anything harmful, but she’d been on the receiving end of a number of Urd’s potions over the years, with not always predictable results.

“Muscle relaxant and a painkiller, a powerful one,” Urd replied. “After all that, every muscle Raven has is going to hurt, and I don’t want to think what her throat is going to feel like. By the time this wears off, we’ll have had time to get her to a healer.”

Mara jerked a nod, and as Lind and Urd gripped Raven’s shoulders and upper arms, the diamond-tattooed demon sent a tiny pulse of power washing through the girl. The angels shifted their song to one of comfort, helpless concern on their faces.

Raven jerked as her eyes flew open, every muscle tightened, and her mouth fell open in an almost silent shriek.

“Easy Kitling, we have you,” Lind assured her as she and Urd tightened their grip on the writhing girl.

“Hurts!” Raven hissed.

“We know,” Mara said as she held the cup to Raven’s lips. “Here, drink this, it’ll make the pain go away.”

Raven eagerly gulped down the cup’s contents, and within minutes went limp as her eyes sagged mostly closed.

Her three mothers sighed in relief. Urd used the hem of her robe to wipe away the spillage from each corner of Raven’s mouth as she clasped one open hand. Lind pulled Shadowlight out from between her breasts and tucked it under Raven’s other arm then stroked her raven-dark hair with a hand that shook slightly.

“All right, plans for the rest of the day,” Urd finally said. “Neither of you are going to work, I already called those that need to know. Belldandy will be here as soon Peorth gets to the temple to babysit, and while she takes Raven to Brynhildr to check for any problems beyond sore muscles, some scrapes and a stripped throat, _we_ are going to get some rest. Once Belldandy brings Raven home and my potion wears off, we’ll spend the rest of the day — and however many more days it takes — with Raven until she’s recovered.” The chime signaling an arrival at the front gate sounded. “That would be Belldandy.” Urd reached up to pull Mara’s robe off her shoulder and held it out to her occasional lover. “Here, give Raven to Lind and put on your robe.”

/\

_half an hour later:_

Hild sighed with relief when a stud on her desk started flashing, indicating her latest secretary wanted to talk to her ( _needed_ to talk to her, rather — none of them ever _wanted_ to talk to her, even when they started to guess the truth just before she reassigned them). While the penalties for mistreatment of damned souls beyond their allotted sentence were severe, demons were mostly a rather sadistic lot. And while there was some (fading) entertainment value in catching them in their conspiracies to both hide their excesses and to replace her, the _hunt_ for those inevitable conspiracies was unremitting; she could use a break. Besides, thinking about Urd’s call that morning reporting that Mara wouldn’t be reporting for her latest assignment was making concentration difficult.

She assumed her usual slightly disturbing cheerful smile and pressed the ‘accept’ button. A view window opened in the air over her desk in front of the ones she’d been using to review the various department performance figures, showing the face of her current secretary (this one male, and didn’t she have fun flirting with _them_ — it added a whole new level of torment to their punishment). “Yes?” she asked, in her perky voice with an undertone that promised pain if the interruption wasn’t important.

“Hild-sama, Urd is here,” he said quickly. “She says it has to do with your granddaughter.”

Hild had no problem controlling her expression, she’d already been prepared by Mara’s emergency rescheduling. “Send her in, send her in! I always have time for family,” she bubbled. Maybe she would be lucky and the next time Urd dropped by he would send her daughter straight through. Though that wasn’t likely — whatever issues sent souls to Niflheim, incompetence wasn’t one of them, not for those she picked as her secretaries. It was supposed to be _their_ Hell, not hers.

/\

The door to her mother’s office swung open, and Urd strode through. The young-seeming perky, tanned platinum blonde glanced over as the door closed behind her, her eyes widening slightly. “You look like hell,” she said.

“Ha ha.” Urd dropped into one of the seats in front of the desk.

“The Cat Fist?”

“Yes.”

Hild waited for a moment, then sighed. “Raven?” she asked in a weary tone.

Urd blushed. She knew Hild acted differently when she visited, the Daimakaicho actually seemed to care for her adopted daughter, but ... “I don’t know. She’s drugged for pain and Belldandy’s taken her to a healer while Lind and Mara rest. Physically, she should be fine, sore muscles and a stripped throat, a few scrapes, but nothing that can’t be healed easily enough. Mentally ... don’t expect Mara to be showing up for work for a few weeks, our daughter needs her.”

“Not a problem,” Hild said airily. “Certainly Raven is more important than the scutwork she’s been doing.”

Silence fell again, Hild contemplating her daughter as Urd looked down at her hands. Finally, Hild asked, “Urd, why are you here?” When her daughter looked up, she continued, “You could have told me the little you have with a simple call, you look like you should be resting with Lind and Mara, and you _hate_ my little visits. So why did you come to tell me in person?”

Voice almost a whisper, Urd asked, “Do you still have the ones that were on Raven’s little list?”

Hild’s eyes widened, then she leaned back in her seat and contemplated the bronzed platinum blonde with a sardonic smile. “Ah. So _that’s_ what this is all about. Xian Pu and Mu Tse have received their punishments and accepted their lessons and moved on, though that cute little piglet’s still around somewhere. He still gets lost, but his wanderings are restricted to Niflheim now, with its wide variety of punishments — the added random element is a nice touch. But they aren’t the ones you are really interested in, are they?”

Urd shook her head, still looking down at her hands.

Hild chuckled. “So ... yes, Genma is still here. In fact, it seems he’s going to be here for a long time; he simply will _not_ accept responsibility for what he did to his son.”

“Good,” Urd ground out. Hild waited again, until finally Urd asked, “What did you do to him?”

Hild’s grin was much harsher than her usual cheerful smile. “I hung him up on a wall and made him available to anyone that wanted to ... make use of him.”

“ ‘Make use of him’? How?”

Hild shrugged. “Punching bag, sex toy, hare for their hounds, appetizer, whatever. He was quite popular in the beginning, but he’s been spending most of his time hanging in his niche lately.” She paused a long moment, then asked, “Would you like to see him?”

After a moment, Urd straightened in her seat and took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes, I would.”

“You had but to ask.” Straightening in her own seat, Hild brought up her virtual keyboard and her fingers flew across its surface for a few moments. Her light smile turned impish. “It looks like you’re in for a treat, Guzroth has decided his pets haven’t been getting enough action lately. How appropriate, considering what Raven just went through. Guzroth is my Master of Hounds,” she added, swiveling her seat to the side to look up toward a wall.

Her daughter swiveled her own seat to follow her mother’s gaze, and her eyes widened as a large virtual screen sprang into existence to show the stocky, muscular form that Genma had had when his ‘daughter’ had beheaded him with his own Family blade. He was running through a dank, dark, mist-shrouded forest — the trees deciduous, but ... ragged-looking, dark green leaves dripping with condensation. Tendrils of mist twisted through the vegetation, and all around were loud, eager howls of pursuing canines. Urd smiled — Genma’s desperation was almost tangible.

Then from between two trees a dark form flowed out in front of him, a waist-high wolf-shape so black it seemed to be a hole in the world that swallowed what light there was, except for two eyes that glowed a fiery red. The former martial artist leaped over the sudden obstruction, tucked into a roll, killed his forward momentum and kicked up to catch the hell hound he’d just avoided as its leap carried it over him. It slammed up and sideways into a tree trunk with an impact that shook down leaves. Leaping to his feet, Genma spun to kick away a second hound that bounded out of the mist, caught a third by the throat to smash it to the ground — and the fourth slammed into his side, knocking him off his feet. A moment later, he was buried under more hell hounds coming from all sides. For a moment his screams could be heard ripping out from the pile, and then that pile came apart — each hound tearing free its own piece of its prey to carry away with it.

As the screen blanked Hild glanced sideways out of the corner of her eye at her daughter just in time to catch sight of a grin before Urd’s face shifted into a more neutral expression. The demon/goddess swiveled back around to face her mother and asked, “What happens to him now?”

Hild shrugged. “He can’t die ... again ... so eventually he’ll reconstitute back in his niche until someone else wants to play — and he’ll continue to feel what happened to him until he reforms.” She paused for a moment — her daughter was enjoying the news a little _too_ much. _Don’t let it go to your head, Little One, a steady diet isn’t good for you at all._ “You’d better get home and get some rest, Raven’s going to need you when your sister brings her home.”

Urd shook herself free from her happy thoughts and nodded. “You’re right.” She rose to her feet and strode toward the door, then paused. Without turning around, she said, “You know, it isn’t going to be all that many years before Raven remembers the Wall — and that you left her to hang there for a year before taking her down and offering her a job.”

“I know.” Hild’s voice was flat, her usual air of insouciance absent.

“Come visit this afternoon. Raven needs all her favorite people around her right now.”

“I will.”

Urd silently nodded, then strode through the door and was gone.


	3. Apogee

_Five years later:_

An eleven-year-old Raven smiled as she sat up in bed and stretched. Even waking up early, she was in a bubbly mood. She was finally getting real control over her powers and the emotions that made them so dangerous. Her life as Ranma that she had been reliving in her dreams had been easing off, slowing down as Ranma’s age had passed her own, and her former self and his father had wandered into some absolutely _beautiful_ country in China. (Finding herself attracted to the girls she saw in her dreams had been weird, and the Talk resulting from asking Momma Mara about it even weirder; she wondered sometimes if being attracted to boys when she got old enough would feel the same way.) Her tutors were impressed with her progress (easy, when she enjoyed reading, mostly, though the demonology wasn’t much fun).

And best of all today was her birthday, and _all_ her favorite people would be joining in one big party! Mamma Urd and especially Mamma Lind and Aunties Skuld and Peorth had become comfortable enough around Grandma that Raven’s empathic ability allowed them to be in the same room at the same time with her for more than a few minutes. So this time, no party with the goddesses (including Mama Urd) on her birthday and one the next day with the demons (again including Mama Urd) plus Auntie Bell, the last few years. Grandma had explained why demons and gods didn’t get along soon after her dream of the Cat Fist training. (Raven shied from the thought of that night — the hatred for her father that it had engendered had set back her training in controlling her emotions — and so her powers — to practically the very beginning.) Still, she was happy that her adults in the two camps had reached the point that they could get along in spite of the fact that one group tried to change bad people into good people while the other wanted to punished them.

Hopping out of bed, the dusky-toned girl rushed to use the bathroom, then threw on her robe over her pajamas and dropped into her meditative pose, floating in the air with her legs crossed, open hands resting palms up on her knees. She closed her eyes and took deep even breaths as she murmured, “Azarath Metreon Zinthos. Azarath Metreon Zinthos. Azarath ...” In the calm the mantra helped create, she carefully relaxed the walls she’d built over the years around the power that surged in her core, reached out as it flared, guided it, shaped it as she felt its cool embrace as it rose to surround her ... then felt her stomach drop as the world vanished around her. She hung suspended for a split-second, then ‘oomph’ed as she dropped and her butt smacked down onto the floor — but _this_ floor was tile rather than carpet-covered wood. She kept her eyes closed tight as she fought the power cloaked around her back deep into her core, once again strengthened the walls that kept it bound.

Her inheritance once again safely locked away, she finally opened her eyes to find herself looking at her Auntie Bell standing at the kitchen stove she’d insisted be installed for her visits. Raven had long ago decided that _some_ people had weird ways of meditating, however nice they were — but she wasn’t going to complain about the results. “Hi, Auntie Bell!”

“Good morning, Raven, happy birthday,” Belldandy replied with a fond smile as Raven stood up and happily took a seat at the table where an enormous American-style breakfast — Raven’s favorite, at least the meat part of it — was laid out, across from her ‘aunt’. “That was very impressive. When did you learn to travel like that?”

Raven broke off shoveling bacon, ham and sausage onto her plate. “Uh ... just now,” she replied, blushing.

“Oh, my.” Belldandy’s expression turned serious. “What have your mothers told you about unsupervised practice?”

The birthday girl’s eyes fell. “Don’t.”

“And with good reason. You did very well, but what if you had gotten lost? Father only knows where you might have ended up.” Belldandy quickly circled the table to hug the now distraught Raven. “It’s your birthday so I won’t say anything to your mothers, but I expect you to tell Lind the next time you train.”

Raven sighed, but nodded. “Yes, Auntie Bell, I’ll tell Mama Lind.”

“Good. Now eat up while the others are getting here, it’s going to be a big day.”

/\

Raven squealed as the wrapping around what she’d already known would be a book tore away to reveal a National Geographic book on journeys of a lifetime. She opened the book and paged through it, staring at the pictures of all the amazing places on Midgard. Someday she was going to go there, to see the beaches and mountains, jungles and cities for herself....

Setting aside the book, Raven turned to the last two presents, the ones from her adopted grandparents. Grandma Hild’s was a thin, rectangular box longer than she was tall, and Grandpa Kami-sama’s was a thin, square box four feet on a side.

Glancing back and forth between the two, Raven decided on her grandmother’s first, seeing how she was actually present. A minute later the wrapping was off and the box open, to reveal a long, sleek ... spear? _Most_ of it looked like a spear, at least, though with a couple of ... techno-somethings ... attached to the end of the shaft. Raven double-checked the name — yes, it was from Grandma Hild, not Auntie Skuld. Besides, she’d already opened Skuld’s gift, and while she still didn’t know what it was (to say that the Norn of the Future’s “explanation” had been confusing was an understatement), it had at least come with an inch-thick operating manual; this didn’t have any manual at all.

She looked up. Whatever it was, her mothers were _not_ happy, Skuld (now grown into a young woman, matured by the pressures of living on Midgard) was burning with envy, and Belldandy was ... amused? And her grandmother felt like she’d just played a wonderful prank on _somebody_. Turning to the star-tattooed platinum blonde Daimakaicho of Niflheim, she asked, “What _is_ it?”

“It’s a racing broom,” Hild informed her.

Raven eyed Hild suspiciously. She knew her grandmother loved her, but she also knew her sense of humor — this time the prank might be on her. “A _racing_ broom? Have you been reading Harry Potter?”

Skuld, Mara, Urd, and even _Belldandy_ snorted, though Lind looked confused. But then, the Valkyrie hadn’t been one for reading bedtime stories to a younger Raven. For a moment, Hild considered mentioning the quidditch game she had set up once (with slightly modified scoring), before hastily quashing the thought. Raven would insist on seeing the recording, and with two teams of demons — and their innate toughness and regenerative capabilities combined with their typical demonic sense of fair play ... _Maybe when she’s older._

“No, no, it’s the real thing, the fastest in existence.” Hild assured her, before glancing over at Belldandy. “Though quick thinking and fancy maneuvering count for a lot. I know you’ve outgrown your playmates, but with Gluhende Herz you can race with your Auntie Bell. She’s really quite good.”

Raven looked back down at the racing ‘broom’, a broad smile spreading across her face, before the smile turned back into a frown and she looked back up. “So why are my mothers so unhappy?”

Hild laughed. “I think they would have preferred I gave you some drums,” she replied, then winked at Urd, her daughter rolling her eyes in response. “Relax, daughter, Gluhende Herz has some added features now — a wind shield and a body lock. They cut down on its speed a little, but when Raven rides it she isn’t going anywhere she doesn’t intend to.”

“ _Indeed not, Mistress. My new mistress will have nothing to fear._ ”

“It talks!”

“ _Yes, I do,_ ” Gluhende Herz replied. “ _I am a fully sentient artificial intelligence._ ”

“But ... but you’re a gift? !” An outraged Raven lifted her gaze to Hild and opened her mouth for a hot rebuke, only to pause when her new ‘broom’ replied.

“ _Do not be angry with Mistresss Hild, it is my nature to need a master to obey._ ”

“But ... but ...” Raven looked uncertainly over at Skuld. She was finding talking with something that she couldn’t _feel_ to be ... unpleasant, like she was missing half the conversation.

The young goddess nodded. “It’s all right, all AIs are programmed for obedience when created, though some may eventually exceed their programming. They need to be, they are like children in adult bodies.”

“Okay ...” Raven said doubtfully, not sure she understood the explanation. But Skuld was the techno-goddess, if she said it was all right it must be, right? And at least she’d only used two sentences this time....

She put aside the thought for later, and brightened as she looked over at Belldandy. “So Auntie Bell, when can we race?” she demanded.

“Later this afternoon,” Belldandy replied. “We have your birthday cake and ice cream first, and you still have your grandfather’s present to unwrap.”

“Oh, yeah.” Raven ran her hand along the long ‘handle’ before reluctantly turning to her last present. The wrappings were quickly ripped off and the box pried open to reveal ... a mirror? She looked back up at Belldandy.

Belldandy smiled at her adopted niece’s unasked question, but the girl could sense a hint of ... regret? Remorse? A twinge of old pain of some sort, anyway. “Yes, it does more than just show your reflection,” the Norn said. “When you ask, it will show you any mortal on Midgard which you knew in your previous life.”

“But why would I care about any of them, surely you don’t mean Genma,” Raven protested, shuddering. With the Cat Fist training, the man she now refused to acknowledge as her father had ceased to be ‘funny’ — she hated and despised him, and only her mothers pointing out that Ranma didn’t know any better kept her from despising her former self for putting up with him.

“There is one you might like to see,” Belldandy disagreed. “What about your mother? _Ranma’s_ mother?”

“Ranma’s mother?” Raven’s mind flashed back to the earliest memories she had from her former self, of a beautiful redheaded Oriental teenaged girl in traditional Japanese dress, singing a lullaby as she tucked her little boy into bed. “Show me Ranma’s mother!” she ordered the mirror, still in its box on the floor.

The mirror’s reflection of the ceiling vanished as the glass filled with glowing mists before clearing to show the same girl, only now ... now she was a middle-aged woman, her hair faded to auburn and streaked with white, lines around her eyes, still dressed in a kimono. She was setting food on a low Japanese table as a tiny, wrinkled ancient being identifiable as a woman only by her long white hair pogoed toward her on a staff. The old crone was followed by two running children about Ranma’s age, one with hair the same color as Mama Urd, the other’s hair sea-green. Behind them a beautiful woman, younger than Ranma’s mother, in a house dress with long brown hair brought up the rear. They all sat down beside a third woman already there, brown hair in a stylish shoulder-length cut, dressed in tight shorts and a T-shirt, about the same age as the woman doing the herding and close enough in appearance to be her sister. But Raven had eyes for only one of the people shown. “She’s so _old_ ,” she whispered, staring down at the silent image of her mother.

“Well, it has been thirty years since Ranma was born,” Mara pointed out, crouching beside her daughter. She reached down to touch the glass over the green-haired girl. “This one is your sister, the others are friends that your mother and sister live with.”

“I have a sister. I have a sister! Why didn’t you _tell_ me! ?” Raven demanded.

The others glanced around as several flower vases on nearby side tables started to shake, surrounded by a faint dark light. Lind stepped over and knelt to lay a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Easy, Raven, calm yourself,” she murmured.

Raven closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she sought the calm of her center, and after a moment the vases steadied. “Sorry,” she muttered, than asked again, more calmly, “Why didn’t you tell me about my sister?”

This time it was Urd that replied, kneeling and reaching around from behind to pull Raven into a hug as the image in the mirror vanished. “There was no point in telling you earlier — you couldn’t visit her, and your grandfather decided only now that you have gained enough control over your powers that you won’t break the mirror by accident.”

“But I can visit her now, right?” Raven asked hopefully, only to shrink slightly at the regret all the adults instantly radiated.

“No, Kitling, not yet, mortals simply aren’t as tough or replaceable as your possessions here, and you’ve just shown that your control isn’t perfect yet.” _And it’s going to get worse, when you start remembering your time in Nerima._ “Now, why don’t we have the cake and ice cream, then you can take Gluhende Herz racing with your Auntie Bell while we put the mirror up in your meditation room.” She smiled when Raven brightened, then turned the girl around and pointed a warning finger at her. “Just remember, your mother and sister’s lives are private — if you find yourself watching anything embarrassing, _stop_! And unless people are in danger, what they do in private stays private, you do _not_ talk about it with anyone else. Understood?” Raven nodded vigorously, and Urd stood, offering a hand to pull her daughter to her feet. “Great! So let’s eat, you’re making Skuld wait for ice cream.”

“Hey!” the hollow teardrop-tattooed young woman protested. “I’m not that bad anymore!”

“Yes, you are,” the rest of the goddesses chorused, and Raven couldn’t help but laugh at the mix of their good-natured humor and Skuld’s chagrin that washed over her.

/oOo\

_The next day:_

Nabiki walked into the house’s dining room, this time dressed in practically formal blouse and slacks. She smiled at the feast laid out on the table and took a deep breath through her nose, sighing at the tantalizing smells permeating the room. Kasumi and Nodoka had outdone themselves, but that wasn’t why the former Mercenary Tendo was smiling — _that_ was reserved for the reason for the feast. The day before had been Raven’s birthday, it was a weekday so the children were at school, and so they were going to have a very important visitor for lunch. Others may have hosted divinity unaware, the three women were well aware of the nature of the guest that would be joining them.

The earth-haired woman glanced up at the clock on the wall. _Any moment now ..._ And there was a knock at the door to the bathroom down the hall. It looked like the clock was running a little slow, Belldandy was always _exactly_ on time. Nabiki strode over to where she would sit at the traditional low table and turned to face the door.

A minute later, Nodoka led the beautiful, apparently tattooed, apparently young woman into the dining room, Kasumi behind them with the last of dinner and Elder Ku Lon bringing up the rear. Nabiki bowed deeply, held it for a long moment, then glanced up at the blushing goddess.

“I told you that isn’t necessary,” Belldandy said, frowning sternly, though the twinkle in her eye told Nabiki she was on safe ground.

“True,” Nabiki replied, grinning, “but I’ve learned my lesson — respect to whom it’s due.”

Belldandy’s blush deepened as she sighed, but she let it go. This particular dance had been going on long enough to be routine.

/\

As Kasumi had insisted upon from Belldandy’s first visit on, the conversation during the meal was dedicated to their own lives — Nabiki’s latest successes as a day trader and suggestions for how Belldandy’s husband Keiichi could invest his earnings as a highly sought-after motorcycle mechanic and part-time racer; the discovery of a love of speed on the part of both Belldandy’s eldest son (expected) and Kasumi and Nabiki’s adopted daughter (a complete surprise); the love of music shared by Ranma’s sister and Belldandy’s daughter; the latest stories from Kasumi, Nodoka, Ku Lon and Belldandy, highlights of the last year of parenting and their worries of the teenage angst and rebellion coming all too soon as hormones began to stir.

Finally the meal was finished, chopsticks laid across plates, Ku Lon bowed out over the usual protestations from Nodoka and Kasumi (giving Belldandy her own deep bow as she left). Kasumi, Nodoka and Belldandy (at her insistence over her hosts’ by now proforma objections) quickly cleared away the dishes while Nabiki headed for a special safe in the bedroom she shared with her sister and returned with an old-fashioned photo album. She put the photo album in the middle of the table as the others rejoined her, and the mortals looked expectantly at their guest.

“So how is Akane doing?” Kasumi asked, leaning forward eagerly.

“She is healthy, and growing into a fine young girl,” Belldandy replied. “Emotionally she is going through a rough patch, but she is well loved and supported. She should be fine.” The goddess’s eyes fell to the table. “I wish I could tell you more —” she began as she did every year.

As she did every year, Kasumi leaned across the table to lay a gentle hand on her immortal friend’s arm. “We understand — if we knew more the temptation to seek her out would be too great to resist. It is enough that she is well, and that we may meet again.”

Belldandy looked up, eyes shiny with unshed tears. “You _will_ meet again, I know it,” she replied, “and we are all keeping an eye on her, even if our ability to intervene is limited by the free will of both her and those around her.”

She wiped at her eyes, took a deep breath, and produced a manila envelope. “And here’s the last year’s photographs of Raven.” Opening the envelope, she pulled out the photos and spread them across the table, and pointed at the latest one, of Raven in flight, hunched low on Gluhende Herz to lower air resistance with her short hair blowing in the wind. “Our children aren’t the only ones that have suddenly acquired a taste for speed,” she said with a smile at Nabiki and Kasumi. “She only received her racing broom today, and already she’s pushing hard enough to scare her mothers. Urd is _very_ unhappy with her mother.”

Nabiki raised an eyebrow. “Racing broom? I knew Harry Potter had been translated into every language on Earth, but I didn’t realize it had reached Heaven,” she quipped.

The other three laughed, though Nodoka’s was a little forced — the similarities between Harry’s and Ranma/Raven’s situations, as slight as they were, had made it impossible for her to read those books to the children, leaving the task to Kasumi.

“I assure you, we have had racing brooms since long before Rowling-san wrote her epic,” Belldandy assured them when the laughter died to chuckles.

The goddess arranged the photos in chronological order, explaining the events surrounding each one as Nabiki jotted down notes that would be expanded into entries in the album’s companion journal, then burned — nothing to do with Raven was to be entered into any electronic format, however well protected from hacking or even unconnected it might be, and the photo album and journal stayed in their safe except when the children were occupied somewhere else. The pictures were as varied as usual, though mostly similar to previous years — a ten-year-old Raven sitting cross-legged on open air, eyes closed and upturned open hands resting on her knees; Raven sitting at a by now familiar kitchen table frowning studiously as a finger traced lines along a page of a large spread-open book; Raven laughing as the purple-haired goddess that had saved Akane’s life threw the young girl in a pool, and the companion photo of Urd and Mara doubled up with laughter as the young woman Skuld had grown into returned the favor to Lind with a push; the dark nimbus that signaled Raven’s power surrounding floating weights, _much_ heavier than the previous year; others of a typical life of a young girl — almost.

Nabiki touched one photo as Belldandy came to it, one of Raven in a dark blue leotard, her legs spread wide to brace her in place, her crossed arms upraised with dark light running along her forearms, shielding them. “This is new,” she said, voice questioning.

“Yes, it is,” Belldandy agreed. “Lind wasn’t certain Raven was ready for combat training, but Raven insisted. No surprise given her previous life, she has been doing well in spite of what little time they have practiced. She came up with her bracers herself.”

“Of course she did,” Nodoka said distractedly. She was smiling wistfully down at the spread of photographs. While she had focused on each photo as Belldandy had come to it, her eyes kept drifting back to the pool scenes. The others glanced at her, and Kasumi scooted over and put an arm around the older woman’s waist as Belldandy continued.

By the time Belldandy again reached the photo of Raven on the so-called broom, Kasumi was frowning. “Bell-chan, these are all wonderful,” she said hesitantly, “but where are the photos of Raven’s friends?” Now that she thought of it, had the number of photos of other children her age been decreasing over the years? And while she hadn’t had many opportunities over the last few years to peruse the photo album and journal — not with two curious little girls in the house — she couldn’t remember the name of a single one of the children in earlier years.

Bell sighed. “You don’t see any photos of her friends because she doesn’t have any.” She stared down at the photographs for a long, silent minute, then looked up at the three waiting women. “You need to understand that while gods may look like mortals, we _aren’t_ mortal — we don’t grow the same way, _develop_ the same way. You mortals mature physically at a more or less set rate over a few years, and hopefully your emotional maturity keeps pace well enough that, with the proper societal reinforcement, you each are able to deal with that growth.

“But for gods, it works the other way around — physical maturity is determined by emotional maturity, and we are not in any hurry to push our few children to grow up. They have all of eternity ahead of them, what are a few centuries of childhood?”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Nabiki protested. She pointed to the photo of Skuld pushing Lind into the pool. “Your sister has been in these photos from the beginning, and she was a young teenager in the earliest ones while here she looks as mature as any of the rest of you.”

“True,” Belldandy agreed, “but by the time you first met her, little sis had been living on Midgard for years. Dealing with mortals in all your pain and glory always speeds up the maturation process. And for the last ten years she’s been living in the same house as _my_ children, and half-mortal offspring follow the mortal pattern for maturation — that has also pushed Skuld to mature faster as well, just to deal with them. If the previous centuries are any indicator, by living on Midgard, she has taken centuries off of her childhood.”

She paused for a moment to give the three mortals the chance to absorb what she’d just said, then continued, “What this means for Raven is that she has matured at the normal mortal rate, if not faster because of her memories of her time as Ranma — and her friends didn’t. It will take them centuries to reach the level of maturity that she will reach in a few years. Once Raven realized what was happening, she simply stopped making friends her own apparent age as she left behind the earlier ones and stuck to the adults in her life.”

“That’s terrible,” Nodoka whispered. “She must be so lonely.”

Nabiki chuckled, shaking her head, and tapped the picture of Raven getting thrown in the pool. “That doesn’t look ‘lonely’ to me, Momma Nodoka,” she disagreed, then frowned. “Still, I’d think that would leave her rather badly socialized.” She looked over the photos again, then slowly said, “She looks like she has good control over her powers, isn’t she mortal-safe by now? She could visit us, get to know our children, her sister....”

But Belldandy was shaking her head. “You are right, her control is excellent, she is safe around mortals now. But her returning memories of Ranma’s life have just reached the point in the training journey where they are about to arrive at Jusenkyo, and all the madness starts. The memories seem to have slowed down to one day as Ranma per night, so over the next two years she is going to be reliving the chaos that led to her death ... and then spend the year after that reliving what followed. We are not certain what level of impact that will have on her control of her emotions and the powers they are tied to, but there _will_ be an impact.” She looked at the suddenly stricken, sick expressions. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Nodoka forced herself through the shock and took a deep breath. “No, you have nothing to be sorry for,” she said firmly. “The dishonor is ours, even if my daughter is still paying the price.” Her eyes fell to her hands, clenched tight fists crumpking the fabric of her kimono. “When she comes out the other side of what lies before her, she is going to hate us for what we did to her, and we will deserve it.”

Belldandy was again shaking her head. “No, you don’t deserve it, not anymore. You aren’t the woman you were before, none of you are. Nor will she hate you when she is finished remembering, not with what you have become since then.”

“But the last time I saw her, she refused to even look at me. After reliving all that again, how can she not hate me?” Nodoka asked, voice quavering, fighting not to cry. Kasumi’s arm around her waist tightened, pulling her against the younger woman, offering what comfort she could.

Belldandy hesitated for a moment, then said, “Father gave Raven a special gift this year, a mirror that would allow her to watch any mortal in Midgard that she knew as Ranma. We showed you to her — and the rest your family at the same time, including her sister. The mirror doesn’t allow her to listen, but just watching you she will know that you are not the people you were, none of you. The girl that forgave Akane for what she had done will forgive you as well.”

“May it be so,” Nodoka said, wiping at her eyes, but sitting straighter.

“It will be,” Belldandy said, so firm in her belief that, at least for the moment, the others had no choice but to believe her. Then she glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed. “I am sorry, but it is getting late, the children will soon be out of school, both yours and mine.”

“Of course,” Kasumi said, instantly shifting into hostess-mode and rising to her feet at the same time as Belldandy, the other two a heartbeat behind them. They made their farewells (Nabiki again bowing deeply, grinning at Belldandy’s resultant blush), and then the Norn of the Present headed for the full-length mirror in the bathroom and was gone for another year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit about the different way Asgardian children mature is purely mine, but is my answer to a bit of a problem in the OMG! manga - Skuld. Throughout the series, Skuld has been growing in both power and maturity, just like any kid would. But she's the Norn of the future - meaning she's been around for a long time - and her skills with really high tech far outstrip her sisters. These facts do not mesh well. So, this is my attempt to make them play nice together.


	4. Get Me Through December

_Two years later:_

A thirteen-year-old Raven frowned as she slipped out of the sweat-stained black leotard she had adopted as her training wear. Momma Lind had been on edge through the entire session, making it harder to concentrate on maintaining control of her powers while she practiced.

_No, she isn’t ‘on edge’, she’s_ afraid _. They all are, it involves me somehow, and they won’t tell me_ how _!_ She paused for a moment to take a deep breath, close her eyes, and fight the anger boiling at her core back into submission. Sooner or later they’d tell her what was going on, until then she simply had to trust them.

But her nightly reliving of Ranma’s life in Nerima made that hard.

_Enough!_ She bundled up her leotard and tossed it in the dirty clothes hamper, where it would be automatically cleaned and hung up in her closet. _You aren’t Ranma, and your mothers aren’t Genma and Nodoka._

Though from what she had seen in the Mirror, her original mother had improved considerably with the years. Maybe actually having a child to raise had gotten all that twisted honor and ‘manliness’ crap out of her system. _Little sis certainly seems to have turned out better than I did, the first time around._ Though her opinion of her former self had improved quite a bit since she started remembering the Nerima chaos. Ranma may have been a little narcissistic with a big enough ego for an entire platoon of Pattons and a permanent case of foot-in-mouth disease, but he had a good heart.

_Ranma...._

As Raven walked into her attached bathroom toward the shower, she paused in front of her full-length mirror and ran her eyes over her nude form. Her hair was the same color as the Akane of her memories, but that was the only real similarities she could see with the girl from whom she'd inherited her body.  Her bust size was considerably smaller (though she had a few years yet to finish growing, out as well as up), her face was narrower, she was lithe instead of muscular, her skin was the dusky shade that seemed to have come with the Seed of her new “father” ... no, anyone that had known Akane would think she was a complete stranger. But she was still cute.

For just a moment, she found herself admiring her naked body through Ranma’s eyes. She whirled away from the mirror toward the shower, feeling her cheeks heat up. Her face must be glowing red ... though not all of that heat was embarrassment, or even most of it. _At least this time you weren’t at the hot springs with three totally hot, totally naked older women that just happened to be your mothers, it was a week before you could look at them without blushing. And the teasing when Mama Urd guessed what had happened ... !_

An image of one of Ranma’s favorite memories sprang up, of the first time he’d seen Akane naked when she’d walked in on him in the furo (not that even he had ever been stupid enough to tell her that). There had been nothing perverted about his perfectly understandable physical reaction to the sight, whatever Akane had claimed. _Raven’s_ reaction, on the other hand ...

As she stepped into the shower and turned it on (the water instantly warmed to her preferred temperature), she briefly considered taking some extra time to explore just how ‘perverted’ her own reaction could be (at least as much as her thirteen-year-old body permitted — being that young with eighteen-year-old memories could be a hassle, especially when that eighteen-year-old boy could turn into a girl of the same age and took advantage of it from time to time when he could be sure of his/her privacy). But she reluctantly set the idea aside. Since Mama Mara had stopped getting assignments for Grandma Hild she had become Raven’s primary teacher of scholarly subjects, and Raven had found the normally most gentle of her mothers to be totally unforgiving when it came to being late for her lessons. In half an hour, she would be expecting Raven for her lesson in the ‘ecology’ of Niflheim. _‘Ecology’ is a good word for it, considering the nature of most demons. I’ll have to ask her how a society made up of sadists, narcissists and egomaniacs can actually function. Poor Grandmother._

Shaking off the idle thoughts, Raven grabbed the soap and hurriedly started soaping up (and sighed once again at the lack of time to take proper advantage of her shower time).

/\

_Ranma struggled against the tentacles that held her as a mansion faded into view, all white marble walls covered with tapestries her eyes shied away from — the scenes they portrayed were not something a naked girl being forcibly restrained by a strange_ Something _wanted to contemplate._

_It had all fallen apart so_ fast _! It hadn’t been more than a handful a seconds from Xian Pu showing up to when the redhead found herself floating over her own practically headless, disemboweled body — just before the red-skinned, diseased, tentacle-armed Thing appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her._ At least Akane tried, _Ranma thought as she remembered her last sight of her fiancée, charging toward them with her Hammer upraised._ She did ... didn’t she? _Or was Akane trying to ‘punish’ her fiancée for being ‘perverted’ again?_

_Then the Thing carrying her turned and Ranma’s eyes widened as a large bed came into view. “I would welcome you to your new home, but I don’t think you will enjoy it much,” her captor gloated. “But I’ll enjoy it,_ Oh _, how I will.”_

_The tentacles wrapped around her shifted, slithered down along her torso to circle her arms and legs, then pulled her out straight with her arms stretched out above her head._

_Ranma instantly took advantage of the shift, bucked, twisted, yanked one foot free of the tentacles’ embrace, and_ shrieked _her effort as she kicked out. But the angle was poor, and the kick aimed for the Thing’s throat instead bounced off its shoulder._

_It didn’t even flinch._

_“A valiant effort, but futile,” it said mock-piously as several tentacles recaptured the errant leg before Ranma could try again. It stretched Ranma out along the bed with her hands pressed against the headboard, and the redhead felt cool metal circle her wrists._

_Freed of their task of restraining Ranma’s arms, those tentacles slid their way down along her body. Ranma gritted her teeth when they paused momentarily to fondle her breasts before continuing down, taking control of one leg while those tentacles already there wrapped themselves around the other._

_The Thing levered its bulk onto the bed, and a bolt of pure fear shot through Ranma as it revealed itself to be rampantly male, enough to have Nodoka extolling his “manliness” if he had been Ranma or Genma. He yanked Ranma’s legs apart. “A natural redhead, beautiful,” he said, leering. “Yes, I will have to consider doing something special for Genma in thanks for trading you to me.”_

_Ranma writhed, yanking on the cuffs around her wrists until the world went white with pain. “Kill you!” she snarled through gritted teeth._

_“Please try,” the Thing said, “it will make breaking you all the sweeter.” He shifted himself around to crouch between Ranma’s widespread legs, effortlessly keeping them apart in spite of her best efforts to clench them shut, and leaned forward._

/\

Raven shot bolt upright in bed, shrieking to wake the damned as the water glass on her side table, knickknacks on her dresser, her vanity mirror, every glass object in her room shattered. Even as shards of glass swirled across the bedroom in a wave of black energy, she rolled out of bed. A wave of her hand encased the chest at the foot of her bed in the same black light and sent it smashing through the bathroom door, clearing the way for her as she flew through on the way to the toilet. She got there just before she lost the fight to keep down what was left of her dinner.

She barely noticed the hands holding her shoulder-length hair up out of her way until she was reduced to dry heaves. When they finally eased off she sat back into Mama Mara’s embrace from behind and looked up to find Urd and Lind crouched beside her, their angels manifested and peering down over their shoulders with expressions of concerned sympathy as they crooned point and counterpoint of a soft, gentle melody. Raven accepted a glass of water from Lind with shaking hands, rinsed out her mouth and spat it out, drank.

As she handed the glass back, she babbled, “It was Ranma, I _died_! And there was a gross red tentacly Thing and he grabbed me, and he was going to ... to rape —” She froze. “Oh, God, that wasn’t a dream, it was a memory — _Ranma’s_ memory. He was about to be ... the next time I go to sleep _I’m_ going to be —” she broke away from Mara’s embrace to lunge for the toilet bowl again, as the water she had just drunk came back up.

An endless time later, as Raven finished rinsing out her mouth a second time, she fought her rampaging fear into submission. When she did, her mothers’ emotional states became much clearer: love, grief, fear, sympathy ... guilt, self-loathing. But no shock, no surprise.

She jerked to her feet and stepped away from her mothers, ignoring the glass shards of what had been her bathroom mirror cutting into the soles of her feet. “You knew!” she shouted. “You _knew_ what happened to me, what I was going to remember, why didn’t you _tell_ me! ?”

“Raven —” Mara began as she stepped forward, stretching out a hand, only to freeze when Raven backed up out of reach. She dropped her arm to her side. “Raven, would you have wanted to know?” she asked.

Raven thought of days, weeks spent waiting for the night to arrive, the constantly increasing fear winding her tighter and tighter, eroding her control ... _What my mothers went through._ She blanched, shook her head. “No ... no, that would have been worse,” she replied. “But why am I reliving Ranma’s life? Why am I even _alive_? You always said you’d tell me when I’m older — well, I think if I’m old enough to remember being raped, I’m old enough!”

Demon, goddess and demon/goddess exchanged glances, nonverbal cues flashing between them, then Lind took a deep breath and told her.

/oOo\

Hild jerked awake at the communicator’s chime. Early morning — _too_ early morning, and she felt a lump of ice congeal in her heart. Rolling over in her bed, she hit the button on her bedside console for audio only and sat up. “Yes?” she demanded, in her usual perky tone (though given the hour, she strengthened the also usual threat underlying it the perky cheerfulness).

“Hild-sama, I’m very sorry to disturb you,” said her latest secretary, her voice shaking. Anastasie was past the ‘jump if Hild twitches’ stage, but no one likes to disturb their boss during downtime and Hild had made it a point over the centuries of emphasizing that point by coming down like the wrath of her ex-husband on whatever fool did so whenever she judged the reason less than adequate — another fine Catch-22, since she did the same to any subordinate, demonic or otherwise, that _didn’t_ disturb her when she later judged it necessary.

“So, what can I do for you this fine, _early_ morning?” Hild asked sweetly.

“Your daughter, Urd-sama is here,” Anastasie replied, voice smoothing out — once you’ve thrown yourself over the cliff, the decision’s made.

“Really? So why are you involved? I already have standing orders to let her see me whenever she visits, whatever the hour might be.”

“Because ...” Anastasie hesitated, then continued with a sigh, “Because she’s drunk.”

Hild felt the cold that had been growing in her heart as she became more awake flash through her body, her bedroom suddenly feeling like an icebox. “Drunk?” she repeated, managing to add a hint of humor to her perky tone.

“Oh, yes, absolutely plastered,” Anastasie agreed, forcedly lighthearted. Apparently, she’d decided that now that she was _fully_ committed she might as well play along. “I’m surprised she can walk at all, much less more or less where she wants to go.”

“Now, this I have got to see, send her in! Sitting room five.” Hild hit the button cutting off the call, then sat and stared into empty air. _This_ time, Raven would have the support of her family, all of them — except her. It wasn’t as bad as when Ranma was murdered ... it wasn’t. _Right, keep telling yourself that._

Throwing aside the covers, she rose and grabbed her robe to pull over her nude body (a robe that was more than a little skimpy, another way to occasionally play with her subordinates) and strode for the door.

/\

Her secretary had been right, Urd was as plastered as Hild had ever seen her. And unlike Urd’s usual benders, she was _not_ a happy drunk. Hild’s daughter usually drank to have a good time, not to numb pain. Not this time. In fact ...

Hild waved for the guards accompanying her daughter to leave, then walked toward the well-stocked bar against one wall. As soon as the door closed behind the guards she brought up a virtual screen, checked the security, and her smile vanished as her shoulders sagged. “Raven’s remembered the Wall, hasn’t she?”

“Oh, y’guessed it,” Urd replied, sarcasm thick in her slurred voice. She weaved toward the bar, then stumbled to a halt when her mother stepped in front of her.

“So why aren’t you with her, instead of here trying to get even more drunk, if that’s possible?” Hild demanded.

“She ran ‘way,” Urd replied, swaying slightly. “We called Father, let him know. He said, let’m handle it. Not like we c’n help, an’way, she hates us. Our little Kitling gonna get raped over an’ over, an’ we can’t ... can’t stop ...” Words failing, she dropped to her knees, arms wrapped around herself as she shook with heartwrenching sobs.

Hild dropped to sit beside her daughter and pulled her into her lap as her own tears flowed. She could remember a time that it had been _her_ on her knees, crying uncontrollably, the day her little one had chosen her Father’s realm over her Mother’s. Hild had known that at the time it was the best decision for her little girl, but it had still felt like a piece of her soul had torn itself out and walked away — and that time she hadn’t been able to sneak away to her ex-husband for comfort. Instead, she’d left orders that she wasn’t to be disturbed for any reason whatsoever, locked herself in her suite and ordered Niflheim’s central computer, Nidhogg, not to let her out until she’d drunk her sober-up/hangover medicine, put on a truly massive number of power limiters, and drank until she broke down and cried herself to sleep on her bedroom floor. Just as her daughter was doing now.

_Though Urd isn’t alone, and won’t be sleeping it off on the floor,_ Hild thought. In spite of how horrible the circumstances were, it felt _good_ to be holding her daughter again.

When Urd’s tears finally faded off into sleep, as Hild had expected, she rose with Urd in her arms and carried her to her bedroom to tuck her into the bed she’d left not so long ago. For time she simply sat beside her, gazing down at the tear-streaked face, one hand stroking the platinum blonde hair Urd had inherited from her.

Finally, she rose and walked over to her bedroom console, retied her robe so that it at least covered everything, and speed-dialed a direct line she’d had installed thirteen years ago. A few seconds later, a virtual window opened to show Mara’s face. “Hild-sama!” the demon exclaimed in surprise, “Why ... ?” She broke off for a moment then nodded, relief plain on her face. “Of course. Is Urd all right?”

“As ‘all right’ as circumstances allow,” Hild said, tone flat, bleached of all emotion. “She’s sleeping it off in my bed. Has my ex-husband come back with Raven, yet?”

Mara shook her head. “No, Mistress, he hasn’t. From the sound of things Raven lost control somewhere in the woods, but it’s been quiet for awhile now.” Turning her head to one side, she said, “No, Lind, for the last time, we are _not_ going looking for them! Kami-sama is going to be in the middle of some delicate negotiations, and take it from someone that knows something about seduction, the last thing he needs is us barging in and making a mess of things.” Turning back to the Daimakaicho, she continued, “I’ll report as soon as I know anything more.”

“Very good.” Hild studied the tanned face framed by platinum blonde hair in her virtual screen for a long moment, before adding, “I believe you can leave off the ‘-samas’ and ‘Mistresses’ from now on — you are spending the occasional night sharing a bed with my daughter, after all, and it isn’t like you are ever going to work for me again.”

Mara blanched. “Hild-sama —” she started, only to break off at Hild’s upraised hand.

“No need to explain, I understand,” Hild said airily, “situations change, people move on. May you serve my ex-husband with the same flair that you did me ... especially these last few years.” Even as Mara winced at the sudden mocking edge to her now-former Mistress’s smile, Hild sobered. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me and mine,” she softly said, then shut down the call on Mara’s stunned expression.

Turning away from the console, she grabbed an ear-plug and palm controller from a drawer so she wouldn’t need to go to the com console if anyone called, opened a cabinet to pull out a decanter and glass and placed them on a bedside table, and climbed back into bed, slipping under the top sheet and snuggling up against her sleeping daughter.

/oOo\

In the middle of a brand-new moonlit clearing in the middle of the woods close to her home where she had played hide-and-seek with little godlings years earlier, Raven floated over white, jagged, sap-weeping stumps. She was in her usual meditation pose, legs crossed, eyes closed, her open hands palm up on her knees. Not so usual was the dark energy radiating from her body to writhe crackling around her. But her breathing was deep and even, and with each outbreath she chanted her mantra, “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos.” Slowly, the energy shrank, faded, withdrew into her, until finally only her dusky-gray skin was all that distinguished her from any other mortal.

Her anger and the power it fueled once again under control — at least for the moment — she ceased her chanting and waited ... and waited ... until, losing patience, she rotated to face her grandfather behind her, this time dressed in the robes of Western imagination. Voice conversational in spite of her glare, she asked, “Are you here to take your tool back to its gilded cage? I’m surprised you didn’t send one of my jailers.”

Kami-sama straightened, pushing away from the tree he had been leaning against, and floated toward her over the devastated landscape. “First, it’s a home, not a cage,” he replied just as calmly. “Second, they are your mothers, not your jailers. And third, you are our beloved daughter and granddaughter, not a tool.”

“Really? You could have fooled me.”

“No,” he instantly disagreed, “they can’t fool you. You are the empath, does it feel like your mothers see you as a tool?”

Raven maintained the glare for a long moment before her eyes dropped. She shook her head. “No, they don’t.”

“No, they don’t. They love you. They would give anything to be able to shield you from what’s coming, and the fact that they can’t is tearing them apart. Urd’s already gotten drunk and gone to visit your grandmother, she probably wants to share the pain by beating on Genma for awhile.”

Raven giggled. “Good. I wonder if she wants some help.” But the brief moment of humor vanished as quickly as it had begun as she began to shake, and her grandfather reached out to embrace her, sitting on air to pull her into his lap as tears started to roll down her cheeks. “Granddaddy, I’m so scared,” she whispered.

“I know, Little One, I know,” he murmured, gently rocking the crying girl.

/oOo\

Urd cracked open her eyes, then slammed them shut with a groan as the light she’d let through stabbed deep into her brain and bounced around with the echoes of the jackhammers pounding on her skull.

A giggle came from behind her, and the demon/goddess realized that the broad line of warmth across her stomach was an arm draped across her, the warmth along her back another body. She grit her teeth, twisted around and, gripping her courage, opened her eyes. “Mara, what did we get into last —” She froze as she recognized the face inches from her own as her mother rather than her friend with benefits.

Instantly, Urd was scrambling back, and for a split second she was in free fall before smacking down butt-first and falling back to slam her head against the floor. The impact seemed to blast from the back of her head out the front before reversing to smash back in.

She sat up and grabbed at her head as she whimpered, then glared up at her laughing mother, now sitting on the bed wearing nothing but an open robe. _At least it’s opaque,_ Urd thought through the pain.

Hild smiled whimsically down at her daughter. “Urd, dear, you used to _love_ sleeping in my bed with me.”

“Yes, well, I was a lot smaller, and _you_ wore more clothes,” Urd grumped. “What am I doing here, any —” Then the memory of the previous night flooded back in, and she paled.

Hild saw, and her apparent lighthearted mood evaporated. She rose from her bed, cinched her robe closed, and filled a glass with a light blue, viscous liquid from the decanter she’d placed earlier on the bedside table and offered it to her daughter. “Here, this will take care of your hangover.”

Urd glared suspiciously at her mother, but took the glass and chugged down the contents. She stiffened in shock as the effects of the potion slammed through her, turning her insides into an inferno, then sagged in relief as her pain vanished. Handing the glass back to her mother, she climbed to her feet. “Raven?” she asked.

“She managed to fight herself back under control,” Hild replied. “Her grandfather brought her home, she’s with Mara and Lind.”

Urd flushed, her eyes dropping to hide her shame, but after a moment she took a deep breath and straightened. _You blew it again, kiddo, so suck it up and deal with it. Maybe if you crawl enough, Raven will forgive you for not being there when she got back._ “Well, we’d better get going,”

Hild’s face lost all expression. “I’m not going,” she said, voice leeched of all emotion. “I don’t think I’m one of Raven’s favorite people right now, do you? Perhaps in a few years she’ll be able to handle seeing me again.”

Urd tried to think of something to say, but came up short. She turned toward the door only to freeze when her mother added, “Urd, you never said just why you came here last night — I’d think as much pain as you were in, you’d have dropped in on Belldandy.”

For a moment Urd considered just walking out, but vague memories from the previous night stopped her — memories of clutching at her mother and sobbing as Hild rocked her in her arms. They had to be drunken dreams, that couldn’t have been the Daimakaicho of Niflheim, but they reminded her of times back before she’d learned what her mother really was. Slowly, as if the words were dragged out of her, she replied, “I was hoping for a shot at Genma and Rothgan.”

“I thought so,” Hild replied, her tone still serious. “I can’t give you a shot at either — Genma finally admitted his failings and moved on a few months ago, and letting you at Rothgan would be bad for discipline. But I do have something else for you, an offer. More specifically, a job offer ... as the commander of my Furies. You’d need some training, of course, seeing how Belldandy wasn’t able to convince you to join her in qualifying for Valkyrie, but that’s not unusual for a new Fury. You _would_ be the first commander that wasn’t a mortal spirit, though, so there might be some resentment from your troops until they get to know you.”

Urd had whirled at the word ‘offer’, but froze, mouth open, her scathingly witty rejection forgotten, as the rest of Hild’s statement registered. After a long moment of staring at her mother looking back, one eyebrow quirked as she waited for a response, Urd finally demanded, “Are you _serious_?”

“Absolutely,” Hild said. “Mind, I wouldn’t want you accepting the offer under false pretenses. My Furies are best known in Asgard for the vengeance they wreak on the worst of humanity once it’s outlived its usefulness, but that only takes up a small part of their time. Mostly, they act as my enforcers here in Niflheim and shock troops during the inevitable rebellions. Without troops motivated by something other than sadism, hedonism and power hunger, this place would be ungovernable. I give my Furies the opportunity to slake their need for vengeance on the worst abusers both Niflheim and Midgard have to offer, and in return they give me their loyalty. Actually, I’m due a rebellion in a few years — thanks to my very public relationship with Raven, some of my subordinates have decided I’ve gone soft. But there should be time for you to see Raven through the next year and get in that training before the balloon goes up.”

“ ‘Gone soft’,” Urd repeated, mind whirling. When it came to Raven Hild hadn’t gone soft, because she’d never been _hard_ — from the beginning she had doted on her adopted granddaughter. Urd wanted to scoff at the idea that it could be real, reject it out of hand, just take it as one more case of her mother pulling the wool over another naïve little girl’s eyes. In fact, she _had_ thought just that when she’d thought about it at all, but ... _But Raven’s an empath, she may not know what people are thinking, but she knows what they are_ feeling _— and she loves Hild. She_ trusts _Hild. When it comes to my mother she thinks I’m an idiot._

Urd had always felt that her daughter was being naïve just like she had been, but she was getting a sinking feeling that Raven was right — when it came to Hild she _was_ an idiot. Of course, that would put her in the same company as pretty much the rest of Asgard, all of Midgard, and every demon she’d ever met including Mara, but ... _But_ Belldandy _thinks like Raven, too. I always assumed it was just Bell being Bell, thinking the best of everybody, even the worst. But she’s often right, what if she’s right this time as well? And if she’s right about Mother_ this _time, what does it say about Mother when I left?_

Urd blushed with shame as she remembered the words she’d thrown in her mother’s face the day she’d walked out, but shook off away the confusion. She’d take apart her entire worldview and reassemble it later, right now she had a daughter that needed her, and whose forgiveness she needed to get down on her knees and beg for.

/\

Late that night, a bleary-eyed, terrified girl lying between Urd and Lind in the new king-sized bed they’d brought in and set up in its own new room finally slipped into sleep and began to writhe.

As she helped her co-mother hold the twisting Raven while Mara contained the crackling black energy radiating out from their daughter in undulating streamers and the scent of physical arousal began to tinge the air, Urd realized that it didn’t really matter what her mother was, she’d already made her decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The episode title comes from the song of the same name by Alison Krausse. It has a few youtube offerings, of which my favorite is the one uploaded by kitimastr:
> 
> How pale is the sky that brings forth the rain  
> As the changing of seasons prepares me again  
> For the long bitter nights and the wild winter's day  
> My heart has grown cold, my love stored away  
> My heart has grown cold, my love stored away
> 
> I've been to the mountain, left my tracks in the snow  
> Where souls have been lost and the walking wounded go  
> I've taken the pain no girl should endure  
> Faith can move mountains; of that I am sure  
> But faith can move mountains; of that I am sure
> 
> Just get me through December  
> A promise I'll remember  
> Get me through December  
> So I can start again
> 
> No divine purpose brings freedom from sin  
> And peace is a gift that must come from within  
> I've looked for the love that will bring me to rest  
> Feeding this hunger beating strong in my chest  
> Feeding this hunger beating strong in my chest
> 
> Get me through December  
> A promise I'll remember  
> Get me through December  
> So I can start again


	5. Rocky Ground

_One year later:_

_Raven’s eyes dropped just in time to see the Seed vanish into the baby Akane’s chest. At that instant Belldandy and her angel added their own wordless thread to the music of Time, a ribbon of sound that seemed to wrap itself around Urd’s foundation of all that had gone before and lifted to mix with Skuld’s endless possibilities, binding the two together into a harmonious whole — and Raven found herself falling forward, settling downward, the baby looming larger and larger until it seemed to encompass all that was._

_And everything went white._

/\

Raven opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. The long nightmare was finally over, with the end of Ranma’s life for the second time — sort of. She just wished she could _feel_ the relief better. But that hadn’t been an option for months, not since the night that her mind had finally shattered under the strain of the constant fear of the assault that each night’s sleep might bring, and of the forced pleasure and humiliation from the all too frequent times that it did. That fracturing had left her disassociated from her emotional connections, barely able to feel her love for her family and the joy of happy memories, leaving her alone with the anger and hatred she’d inherited from her second “father” raging at her core.

Those emotional connections had been her shield from that anger and hatred. She’d tried to rebuild her fractured mind, but the best she had managed was to temporarily unite her broken emotions and lock away her inheritance — _keeping_ that inheritance locked away took up too much of her ... focus, for lack of a better word, for any union to be permanent. And without a permanent unity any chance those bindings had of resisting Trigon when he finally called had vanished.

That night she had failed, and doomed the world. Saotome Ranma had finally lost when it really counted.

_Enough, Raven, you_ know _what Grandfather told you about that. It won’t be that bad, the souls of everyone on Midgard ... Earth ... that dies will return to Asgard or Niflheim for a time, and then to sleep until Trigon moves on and the Earth eventually recovers the ability to bear life. It isn’t even the first time something like that has happened, more or less._

That was what Kami-sama had told her, and it had helped — had made it somewhat easier to find the calm she needed to once more master her inheritance. But it hadn’t done much for the guilt that gnawed at her, and her Grandfather has flatly forbade her to even think about suicide. She’d considered ignoring him, but in the end had had decided he must know what he was doing.

Sighing, she dragged herself out of her bed and into the bathroom for a hasty, efficient shower before pulling on the uniform that Peorth had insisted on designing (not without several demands from the mothers that she make it less risqué). She looked herself over in the mirror — a black leotard with sleeves covering her arms and the back of her hands, a dark blue hooded cape with a circular gold-set garnet clasp, other gold-set garnets on the backs of her hands and making up the links of a belt, and dark blue ankle boots and wrist bracers. Peorth had said that if Raven was determined to be a fool, at least she could look the part.

Deciding that she looked well enough, Raven turned from the mirror to her personal com console, pushed a button for a preprogrammed message for Skuld, then picked up her spear-pointed, twin-engined racing ‘broom’ from where it rested against the wall. “Come on, Gluhende Herz, it’s time.” For a moment she half-expected the ‘broom’ to somehow wake up from its year-long ‘sleep’ to ask for one more ride, but however sentient it might be it still came with an ‘off’ switch it couldn’t override.

Her bleary-eyed mothers looked up from their seats around the table when she walked into the kitchen, and Mara lifted the cover off the stasis unit in the center of the table and slid a plate with Raven’s usual meat-heavy breakfast over to her seat, still hot.

Raven paused for a moment to shield herself as best she could from the onslaught of guilt-laden love and concern from the three women, then leaned Gluhende Herz against the wall and sat down, making sure the hood of her cape hid her face from view. “It’s over,” she said quietly, and began to eat. She ignored the spike of relief and concern mixed together, waiting for yet more protests to her plans, such as they were. But none came, so instead she ignored the growing tension and gave them a quick overview of what she had remembered that night — Ranma’s opportunity to slaughter those that had put her on the Wall, and her meeting with Akane and her sisters.

Just as she was finishing breakfast the visitor chime sounded — perfect timing, of course, only to be expected for the Norn of the Future. The four rose to their feet, and Raven hesitated as she considered just leaving. But her mothers deserved better than that, and she took a deep breath, stepped away from the table, pulled back her hood and spread her arms, and fought to keep from flinching and pulling away as her mothers pulled her into a group hug. She was wearing clothes, and her mothers weren’t Rothgan.

“Remember, you may be leaving but we aren’t going anywhere,” Mara whispered. “You can always come home again.” Raven didn’t respond, simply squeezing harder as Lind and Urd murmured their agreement.

The chime sounded again. The mothers reluctantly let go, and Raven gave them a faint smile — the best she could manage, as she fought to keep from shaking from the emotional overload she’d just been through even with the detachment her fractured mind gave her. “I’ll let you know where to send my stuff when I have a place,” she said, pulled her hood back up, picked up Gluhende Herz, and strode from the room.

/oOo\

Mara, Lind and Urd watched from the doorway until Skuld and their daughter vanished from sight into the light woods that surrounded their home, then went back inside and made their way back to the kitchen.

Once there, Mara opened the fridge while the other two sat back down to what was left of their breakfast. A moment later she joined them, handing out chilled cans before opening her own favorite beer.

“Uh, Mara, this isn’t my ambrosia,” Lind pointed out, looking askance at the can of Urd’s sake that the demon had placed in front of her.

“No, it isn’t,” Mara agreed. “For once, you’re drinking something stronger than that Asgardian Kool-Aid you favor.” She glared at her co-mother until Lind opened the can and hesitantly took a gulp and made a face. _It’s a start,_ Mara thought, then gulped down her own can, rose to clear off the table, and grabbed more cans from the fridge.

Lind suspiciously eyed the additional cans — they were all beer and sake, somehow Mara had left out her bottles of ambrosia again. “You wouldn’t be trying to get me drunk, would you?” she demanded. She tried another gulp of the sake and grimaced again.

“Why would we be doing that,” Mara asked, putting on an air of innocence as she handed a can to Urd.

“Because you think I’ve been bottling everything up too long, that I need to ‘relax’,” Lind replied. She eyed the can in her hand and tried a sip this time.

Mara sighed as she opened another can of her beer. “Yes, I suppose I _was_ rather blatant, wasn’t I? I usually try to be more subtle than that, but you were ignoring my hints. You do need to relax, Lind, or you’re going to break as ... as surely as our baby.” Her voice quavered at the last bit, and she hastily took several gulps of her beer.

Lind finally looked up at her co-mother. “You could be right,” she agreed, as two slow tears tracked down her cheeks.

Instantly Mara was up out of her chair and around the table, pulling Lind up into a tight hug, Urd right behind her embracing both co-mothers together.

Lind didn’t wail or break down sobbing, she simply tightened her own embrace around Mara and listened to her soft sympathetic murmuring as a steady stream of tears soaked the demon’s shoulder.

Finally the flow of tears slowed to a stop, and Lind let go of the Valkyrie as the huddle broke apart. “Thank you,” she whispered as Mara handed her a tissue with which to wipe her cheeks. “Thank you,” she repeated more loudly, including Urd this time. She dropped the tissue into the trash receptacle. Ignoring the tiny flash of light as the tissue disintegrated, she asked, “So, when are you to going to tell me what you two’ve been discussing when you didn’t think I would notice? Did you guess Kami-sama was going to order us to give Raven her head and set up a fallback?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Mara quickly asserted, then paused as she realized that Urd had gone stiff. She turned to her friend with benefits (not that there had been any ‘benefits’ over the past year, and emotionally they were shading over into ‘lover’ territory). “Urd, you didn’t!” she exclaimed.

Urd chuckled nervously. “Well ... maybe? I _might_ have suggested to Skuld that we could use some way of tracking Raven....” Her voice trailed off as she glanced sideways out of the corner of her eye at the purple-haired Valkyrie.

Lind gazed sternly back for a long moment, then stunned the other two by breaking into a broad grin. “Wonderful! We’ll have to see if she managed to come up with anything. But if it wasn’t about Raven, what _were_ you two were conspiring about?”

Urd and Mara exchanged glances, Mara cocking an eyebrow. Urd sighed. “You deserve better than to hear about this through gossip, and I suppose there’s no time like the present. Let’s go pay a visit to Kami-sama.”

/\

“Kami-sama will see you now,” Hildir announced from where he sat behind his desk.

Urd rose to her feet and paused for a moment as she fought to steady herself enough to walk. _Come on, it’s been a year since you made your decision!_ She berated herself. _And if you’ve guessed right about Mother and Father, he’ll have already heard all about it, anyway._ It was nothing she hadn’t told herself numerous times over the past year, but that didn’t help settle the butterflies in her stomach at all.

Mara laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Come on, this should be easy!” she said, tone deliberately light. “You told off Hild when you were the next thing to a kid, this can’t be harder than that!”

“Right, well, I was protected then by my invincible ignorance,” Urd retorted. She glanced sideways at an obviously worried Lind and took a deep breath. “Let’s do it,” she said, and strode through the door to her Father’s office with the other two on her heels.

Behind them, Hildir waited until the door closed, then brought up his desk com and typed in a code. As soon as the call was answered, he said, “Skuld, Kami-sama needs to see you immediately.” A few moments later he’d finished the call and typed in another code. “Belldandy, sorry to bother you, but your Father needs to see you right away.”

/oOo\

“You know, this is a _really_ stupid idea, just heading for Earth and seeing what happens. It’s not much better than running away in the middle of the night.”

Raven glared up at the raven-haired young woman with hollow teardrop ‘tattoos’ on her forehead and cheeks, dressed in a T-shirt and oil-stained pocketed overalls. “Yes, Skuld, I am _quite_ aware of your opinion, you’ve expressed it often enough,” she ground out before turning back to watch the tree-lined, tiled path they were walking along. The destruction Raven had wreaked when she’d lost control a year before was long since undone, and she’d decided to walk and take in the scenery rather than simply fly.

“So why are you doing it?” Skuld asked.

Raven tried to ignore the question, but paused when she realized that Skuld was no longer beside her. She looked back to find the youngest Norn standing several yards back, a stern expression on her face she had to have picked up from watching her older sister scold her children.

“Give me an answer if you want my help,” Skuld insisted.

Raven tensed at the determination the goddess was radiating. “You can’t stop me,” she growled, black light coruscating around her fists and along the racing ‘broom’ she held.

“Did I say I’d try? No, just that I wouldn’t help,” Skuld said tartly. More softly, she added, “I won’t tell anyone if you want, I promise, but I need to know.”

After a long moment Raven sighed and relaxed. “All right, but no spreading it around.” Waving for Skuld to catch up, she turned to resume walking. When Skuld was once again walking beside her, she asked, “Did you know that way back when my mothers realized that I was reacting to their emotions to the point it was interfering with learning to control my inheritance, they came up with ... buffers, I guess you could call them, talismans that muted the emotions they radiated?”

“They aren’t talismans, they’re devices,” Skuld replied. “I made them.”

“Oh. I should have known.” Raven considered the new information for a moment, then shrugged. “You never updated them. As I grew older the strength of my empathy increased, at this point they’re useless.”

“Stupid!” Skuld slapped her forehead. “Idiot! Why didn’t I think of that?” Glancing down at the shorter mortal, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Raven barked a laugh. “Yeah, right, like any kid with brains is going to admit something like that. Can you imagine the edge knowing just what my mothers were feeling gave me when it came to getting what I wanted?”

A split-second’s thought had Skuld giggling. “Yeah, I could have used that,” she agreed. “But what does that have to do with you leaving?”

“For the past year, Momma Mara’s been crying every day and trying to hide it, Mama Lind’s been refusing to let herself cry, and Mama Urd’s been drowning her pain by getting as angry as I ever did on the Wall. What do you think it’s been like for me to live in the middle of all that? And Grandmother’s even worse. I’m just glad she’s restricted herself to vidcalls since her last visit; that was a nightmare.” Raven shuddered as she remembered the vortex of fear-fed self-loathing Hild’s calm exterior had hidden. It had taken everything she’d had not to add to it by bolting from the room. Still, she was glad she’d insisted on Hild coming to visit, the Daimakaicho had been in better shape when she’d left. She was just glad that Hild had agreed with her suggestion (or at least pretended to) that the mothers would be less than happy to see her around for awhile.

Skuld blanched as she tried to imagine what it had been like for Raven. “That’s terrible! But why didn’t you _say_ anything? You —” She managed to choke back the rest of the thought: _— might not have broke._

Raven waited for a moment for Skuld to continue, then quietly said, “I am _not_ telling the women that raised me, the first adults to really love me, that their love is hurting me. And neither are you.”

Skuld hesitated, but finally shrugged. “I did promise, your secret is safe with me. But if you are determined to leave your mothers wondering where they went wrong, why didn’t you take up Belldandy on her offer of a place to stay? She’d be glad to have you, the emotional atmosphere would be a lot more congenial, and your mothers would be happier.”

“No!” Raven practically hissed. “No, you’re —” _— better off without me._ “No.”

Skuld suppressed a wince at the undertone to Raven’s voice and glanced sideways at her companion. She doubted Raven realized just how much she was revealing, at least to someone that had kinda-sorta grown up with her. She opened her mouth to argue the point, but finally said nothing. It wasn’t like she could say anything that hadn’t already been said, after all, and she had Kami-sama’s marching orders from the meeting he’d called several nights before, after Raven had fallen asleep, for her loved ones — except Hild, of course. His orders to let Raven have her way hadn’t sat well (Skuld had thought for a moment that _Belldandy_ , of all people, was going to get into a shouting match with her Father). But everyone had finally agreed that Raven’s experiences for the last part of Ranma’s life and death wouldn’t lend themselves very well to acceptance of adults overriding her decisions. And they hadn’t had much leeway to disagree when he’d asked them to trust him. What were they supposed to say, no? No, Skuld’s ability to interfere had been pretty much eliminated by Raven’s intransigence and her Father’s orders.

_Well, almost,_ she thought, as their destination came into view around a bend in the path — the tiled circle that marked the location of the gate to Earth. The gate’s reprogrammable nature made it more energy-intensive and easier for Niflheim to interfere with, but it was also much more convenient. Besides, its limited and unpredictable use was a fine protection from Niflheim playing with it. Raven had been planning on letting it pick an Earth destination at random, but — “Let me pick the destination,” the young goddess said as they approached the gate.

Raven glared up at her suspiciously. “Where?” she demanded.

“Jump City,” Skuld replied instantly as she stepped over to the control panel, unlocked it and brought up the virtual keyboard.

“Never heard of it, why there?”

Skuld shrugged. “It’s a city on the west coast of the United States, and I don’t know why there.” At Raven’s disbelieving look, she added, “Hey, I’m the Norn of the Future, I get hunches.”

Raven rolled her eyes, but finally nodded. “Fine,” she said. “Oh, wait, I almost forgot.” When Skuld glanced over at her, she held out her racing ‘broom’. “I remembered how envious you were when Hild gave me Gluhende Herz, and thought you’d be the best person for it to go to when ...” She left the thought unfinished, and added sternly, “But no taking it apart to see how it works, and no waking it up until it’s over.”

“Aw, you’re no fun.” Skuld pouted, grinning inside at the faint chuckle she’d managed to wring out of her companion. “Oh, all right, I’ll hold onto it for you until you’re ready to take it back.”

“Yeah, right,” Raven snorted. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Not yet, I’ve got something for you, too.” Skuld reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a tiny box, opening it to reveal a diamond-shaped blood-red gem sparkling in the morning light. “It’s called a bindi, you wear it on your forehead just above the bridge of your nose,” she said to Raven’s questioning look. “It’s an Indian tradition, symbolizing the union of male and female energies. It’s perfect for you. Don’t worry about it falling off, I’ve taken care of that.”

Raven hesitated for a moment, giving Skuld a long searching look — the young goddess felt entirely too ... well, _predatory_. But it was Skuld, and in the end Raven smiled faintly and swept back her hood. “Go ahead, put it on. And thank you,” she whispered.

“Hey, no problem, it completes your, ah ...” _costume_ “... uniform,” Skuld said cheerily as she picked the gem up out of the box. She ignored the way Raven tensed up as she carefully centered the bindi before pressing it against the smaller girl’s forehead right below her widow’s peak, letting the tiniest spark of her power leap from the tip of her forefinger to the gem as she pulled her hand back. _And thank_ you _for accepting my little tracker._

She turned back to the virtual keyboard still floating above the gate’s control console and quickly typed away for a few seconds, until a glowing circle made up of variously shaded white fractals unfolded into existence twenty feet off the ground. “There you go, a one-way trip to Jump City, USA.”

Raven tensed for a moment, then relaxed when Skuld made no move to give her a farewell hug. She pulled her hood up and floated up level with the gate, hovered for a moment as she took a deep breath, then dove through the fractal-patterned plane and was gone.

For long minutes Skuld stared up at the glowing, shifting patterns of the gate before she pulled a palm-sized device out of another pocket, hit a button and waited impatiently as the virtual screen sprang into existence ... waited ... waited ... and grinned triumphantly as a line of text sprang scrolled across the screen. “Dimensional positioning system tracking ... Jump City coordinates right ... signal strong ... everything’s green.” _Not that I can actually_ do _anything except watch, whatever happens._ Sobering, she finally turned back to the console with a sigh. “Father knows what he’s doing. He _does_ ,” she murmured. “He always has before, and he does now.” But for the first time, she was finding it really, really hard to take his direct instructions on simple faith. Especially since her expedited studies (thanks to her expedited maturation) had included a _lot_ of history, and her Father’s chosen surrogates didn’t always succeed, or survive, sometimes neither — all of them freely chose to accept their roles, and she had no doubt that her Father cared for each and every one of them, but that didn’t stop him from using them up when the situation called for it. She’d eventually been able to accept the necessity on an intellectual level, but with Raven there was nothing ‘intellectual’ about it — it had gotten very, very personal.

A few quick seconds of typing and the gate slowly folded into itself and was gone. Skuld shut down the virtual keyboard and relocked the console (necessary to keep any children playing in the area from doing something spectacularly stupid), and was walking away when the console’s communicator chimed ... with the particular pattern than meant the call was for her. Turning around, Skuld checked the caller ID and her eyebrows rose as she recognized the name of Kami-sama’s personal secretary. Praying that he wasn’t going to tell her that her Father wanted her to stop Raven after all, she instantly hit the ‘accept’ button. “Hildir, what’s up?” she asked.

“Skuld, Kami-sama needs to see you immediately,” Hildir said.

Skuld’s eyebrows rose further at his formal tone. “I’ll be right there.”

/oOo\

Mara looked curiously around the office of what had until recently been her worst enemy (officially, at least, demonic good manners called for pretending they were all on the same side until the opportunity presented itself to stick the knife in). She was surprised at how cozy it was, with Kami-sama seated in a recliner away from his desk, across from a couch, all by a crackling fireplace — she’d been expecting something more along the lines of Hild’s office, with its sense of elegantly understated raw power.

Behind her, Lind and Urd exchanged glances. Both of them had been in the office multiple times, and every time it had been different. But this time, except for the couch being curved so that two of them would be sitting across from each other and long enough for three instead of two, the room was exactly like when they had been offered the assignment of raising Raven. Neither of the two knew what to make of that.

Kami-sama rose as they approached, and Urd eyed the kimono he was wearing. There was a message in that as well, she was sure. When they came within the proper range he bowed, and the three women bowed back, more deeply. As they straightened he waved them toward the couch, refreshments again on the end tables. The co-mothers sat down, Mara in her usual spot between Lind and Urd.

“So, our Kitling is off to seek her own place in the world,” he said. “I take it that Skuld successfully planted her surveillance?” He glanced around at the co-mothers’ suddenly blank faces. “Of course I knew,” he said. “Her tracker is a marvel of miniaturization, but it contains some very unique components that she had to requisition from Stores. It wasn’t hard to realize just what she needed them for. So has she?”

“I ...” Urd broke off and cleared her throat. “I don’t know. She was going to plant it while sending Raven to Earth, and we came here as soon as they left.”

“Very well, we shall find out when she arrives.” Kami-sama turned toward his recliner. “Before you begin there’s something I have for you,” he said, reaching down out of sight behind his chair, then straightening with a sheathed katana in his hand. The three women exchanged confused glances, then turned back as he stepped over and offered the katana to Lind. “The Saotome Family blade,” he said solemnly as she accepted it. “Raven claimed it when she killed Genma, and used it in her fights with the others. She promised to return it to her mother if Nodoka did a better job of raising her newest child. Raven isn’t divine so she isn’t locked into keeping her promise, but I thought that it would be a good promise for her to keep, when the time comes.”

“Of course, I will inform Raven that we have it when she lets us know where she is staying,” Lind said.

“Excellent.” Kami-sama returned to his seat and took a sip of his own drink. “Now, I suppose Urd and Mara have something to tell me.”

The two named exchanged glances as Lind turned to look at them, then Urd took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, we do,” she said. “Mara has decided that she would be happier if she switched sides.”

Lind bounced to her feet and shouted “Yes!”

Even as her normally stoic co-mother pumped a fist in the air, Urd added, “And so will I.”

Lind froze, fist still in the air, then turned to stare at the goddess/demon. “What! ?” she shouted.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds!” Urd insisted hastily, waving her hands in warding gestures. “Mother offered me command of her Furies!”

Lind’s face went blank, and after a moment she slowly sank back down into her place on the couch across from Urd. “Command of the Furies,” she repeated.

Urd nodded vigorously.

Lind stared at the demon/goddess for long moments, before sighing. Voice soft, she asked, “Do you really want a shot at Genma and Rothgan that badly?”

Urd’s eyes fell. “Genma is beyond my reach,” she replied just as softly. “He accepted his guilt and moved on just a few months before Raven remembered what he did to her. Rothgan, on the other hand ...” She looked back up, eyes burning with anger. “Mother can’t just let me at him, but she has a revolt building. While she hasn’t said so outright, I think he’s one of the conspirators.”

“Even if you are right, what about after the revolt is put down? What then?”

Urd shrugged. “Genma and Rothgan may be the ones that offended against my own, but they are hardly alone.”

“I see,” Lind mused. “And as a Fury you’ll be limited to reaping the souls of the self-condemned and keeping Hild’s underlings in line, not involved with the seductions, bargainings or punishment details.”

Urd nodded again, though more sedately this time. “That’s right,” she agreed.

It was Lind’s turn to shrug. “That’s not so bad, then.”

Mara and Urd’s jaws dropped in shock.

Lind deepened that shock by actually _smiling_. “What, you expected me to go into a rant about how Urd’s been manipulated by Hild into betraying everything she’s supposed to stand for just for petty revenge? There’s nothing ‘petty’ about the revenge Furies are after. The truth is that the Valkyrie and Furies have a lot of respect for each other. Oh, sure, we think they’re revenge-driven fanatics all too willing to shoot first and ask questions later and carpet-bomb their targets when they do, while they think we’re emotionally stunted rules-lawyering nitpickers with — how did you so crudely phrase it, Urd, those years ago when you read me the riot act? — with sticks up our asses, that keep getting in their way.” Lind’s smile broadened when Urd’s blush turned her face a bright scarlet. “But we respect each other’s fighting abilities, we Valkyrie have no problem at all with what happens to Furies’ targets when they get it right, and we share the same low opinions of demons, present company excepted.”

“Interesting. You say all of the Valkyrie feel that way?”

The three women froze, then their heads whipped around as Lind turned pale as a ghost — they’d been so caught up in their family drama that they’d managed to forget that Kami-sama was sitting in his recliner and listening to every word. The purple-haired Valkyrie stammered, forced herself to stop, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again and nodded. “Pretty much, yes.”

“Good,” Kami-sama replied, then chuckled at the sighs of relief from his three guests before smiling approvingly at Lind. “While we have to always keep watch to prevent them from excesses, the Furies do good work both in culling humanity of some of its worst and so protecting the rest, and in the restraint they impose on Hild’s demons. I am happy that my Fist has not forgotten that.

“But Daughter, this course comes with a heavy price,” he continued soberly as he switched his focus to Urd. She felt the singing tension at her core ease at the lack of condemnation or disappointment in his eyes, only loving concern. “The Valkyries will be almost the only ones that make that distinction between the Furies and the rest of Hild’s people. There is Mara, here, and your sisters will love you whatever you do. Peorth will most likely follow Lind’s lead in this. Beyond that, I doubt you will have more than a handful of friends left in Asgard — the rest will feel that you have betrayed them and all that they believe in, and react accordingly. I cannot correct their misapprehension without risking fatally undercutting the Furies’ position in Niflheim, and those that take your side will not be helped by the rumors that have circulated respecting your assignment as Raven’s mother and how it relates to your performance of your assignment overseeing Akane before that. Are you prepared to so thoroughly abandon all that you have built in your time with us?”

Urd nodded. I am,” she replied, voice steady. But her hand had sought out Mara’s and the demon was fighting not to wince as the strength of her sometime lover’s grip revealed the effort it took for her to control her mix of pain, anger and confusion. _Rumors? What rumors? I haven’t heard —_ She shook off the thought — she’d obviously been even more out of the loop since becoming a mother than she’d thought, but she had more important things to focus on right now.

“And World of Elegance?” Kami-sama asked. “You would take your angel into Hell with you?”

“No.” Now Mara _did_ wince, as Urd’s hand tightened even further. “I know I can’t keep my Domain as Norn of the Past, can you give it to Mara?”

Kami-sama nodded instantly. “Not only can I, she is the best available choice. Her close relationship with you will make it easier for your sisters to accept her — to trust her — as deeply as they need to than anyone else in Asgard.”

“Good,” Urd said over Mara’s surprised protest, “Mara doesn’t have a Familiar, so I thought I would pass World of Elegance on to her as well, ask them to look after each other for me.”

Glancing over at her childhood friend, she added, “I know I’m dumping a lot on you, but _someone_ has to take over the Domain, and I want it to be you. Lind’s the only other one that would really understand the circumstances, and she already has a career that she loves. And ...” She paused to clear the lump in her throat. “And there’s _especially_ no one else that I would ask to look after World of Elegance for me.”

Mara smiled tremulously, eyes shining with unshed tears. “Of course, I’ll look after World of Elegance for you. And I suppose while I’m at it I can’t go too far wrong as Norn of the Past with your sisters to look after me.” Then she leaned over, kissed Urd on the cheek, and whispered, “Could you ease up on my hand?”

“Oops, sorry.” Urd blushed and instantly let go, only for Mara to reclaim her hand.

“Holding my hand is sweet, just not so ... ah, enthusiastically,” Mara said with a grin, and what sounded suspiciously like a chuckle from Lind. The demon sobered as she looked over at Kami-sama. “I would be happy to fill Urd’s responsibilities as best I am able.”

“Are you certain?” Kami-sama asked. “You do remember that you will not have the protection of the doublet system for a time — we will have to break your link with the system so that any demons that attack you will not also be targeting whichever god you are currently linked to, and new links cannot be forged until the next time we have enough children to provide a true random element. That temporary lack of protection will make you an especially attractive target.”

Mara nodded. “Urd already pointed that out to me, but she didn’t need to. I’d remembered.”

For a long moment he simply sat and looked at her, a searching gaze that seemed to pierce through to the very bottom of her soul, then nodded when she managed to force her eyes to stay level with his. “Very well,” he finally said, “then there is no time like the present. Hild?”

The three co-mothers stiffened as the _presence_ of the Daimakaicho of Niflheim washed over them, then whirled in their seats to look behind them to find the star-marked blonde rising to her feet from a recliner in what had been an empty corner.

Her usual threat-edged perkiness was absent, her cheeks wet with tears, and they scrambled to their feet as she strode around the couch to embrace her ex-husband. “Thank you,” she murmured, just loud enough for the others to hear.

Urd and Mara exchanged glances, then looked over at Lind staring wide-eyed at the sight. “I’ll pay up later,” Mara muttered.

“Take your time, you’re going to be busy,” Urd replied. “Just be glad you rejected the first bet I offered. What clued you in?”

“She was off a bit when she spoke to me, the last time you got drunk and dropped in on her. Just enough to make me wonder, a little.”

“And why didn’t either of you mention this to me?” Lind murmured, so intent on the embracing pair that she’d believed to be mortal enemies that she missed Urd’s sudden stiffness at the reference to the worst day of their long lives.

“I didn’t think you’d believe it,” Urd replied. “I wasn’t sure I believed it, myself.”

“Fair enough.”

Then Hild again shocked the co-mothers by breaking her hold on her ex-husband to turn and embrace her daughter. “I was so afraid that you would back out at the last minute, thank you!” Hild whispered. “Welcome home!”

Urd hesitantly returned the embrace, stunned speechless by the tremors she could feel running through her mother’s body.

“Lind, Mara.” At the mention of their names the demon and Valkyrie looked away from the mother and daughter over at Kami-sama. “Hild and I would prefer it if you didn’t mention our collusion to anyone.”

“Of course, Sir,” Lind instantly replied. “I would prefer that my friends and shield sisters and brothers think that I’m sane.”

Mara nodded her head vigorously. “Absolutely,” she agreed. “But what about Urd’s sisters?”

“That will not be a problem,” he replied. He stepped over to the still embracing pair and laid a hand on Hild’s shoulder. “Hild-chan, we need to start.”

Hild took a deep breath, then reluctantly let go of her daughter and stepped back. “Right,” she said, voice firm. “You and I can handle the initial steps to make Mara one of yours and break her connection to the doublet system, but we’ll need Belldandy and Skuld for transferring over Urd’s domain.”

Kami-sama actually _grinned_ , and said in a raised voice, “Hildir?”

There was no response, but a few moments later a door appeared in the wall where the co-mothers had entered earlier, and the other two Norns stepped into the room.

As they approached, an apparently furious Skuld striding ahead, Hild quirked an eyebrow at her ex. “After all these millennia, you _still_ like to play the know-all show off,” she said with a sigh. Even as he chuckled, Skuld marched right up to the Daimakaicho and shook a finger in her face. “You big meanie!” the youngest Norn scolded in as childish a tone as she could manage, “why didn’t you _tell_ us?”

Hild stared wide-eyed at the young goddess in oil-stained overalls, then broke into peals of laughter — _pure_ laughter, untinged by mockery, that had everyone else in the room joining in. When the levity finally died down, Hild asked, “Did you manage to put a tracker on Raven?”

Skuld tensed, glanced sideways at Kami-sama, then gusted a light sigh of relief when he smiled. “Yes, I did,” she enthused, “right in the middle of her forehead!” She pulled her Personal Data Assistant out of one of the pockets of her overalls, set it to hover in the air in front of her, hit the button that brought up the virtual keyboard and screen, and typed rapidly. Within seconds a hologram sprang up showing Raven walking down a city street, her dark blue cape pulled closed around her with its hood up to shield her face from both the sun and the stares from the people around her. “It’s keyed to her empathy and emotional state,” she said, and followed up with a stream of technical jargon that had the demon and other goddesses instantly lost.

Urd gently slapped the back of her head. “Speak a language we can understand!” she insisted even as she failed to suppress her smile. It was good to know that some things never changed.

Skuld blushed. “Oops, sorry,” she muttered, then tried again with a sidelong glance at her older sister. “Okay, to dumb it down for the numbskulls, what I said is that we’ll be able to track her anywhere on Earth or any of its ancillary dimensions like Niflheim and Asgard, Dreamland, the Faerie Realms, wherever; and we’ll receive alerts any time her emotions or the emotions of those around her spike. Mostly, anyway; it’ll filter out embarrassment, attraction, disgust, that kind of thing — just ping us for anger, panic, fear, emotions like that.” She _definitely_ wasn’t going to mention her automated recording loop, and the way it would stop looping when Raven’s embarrassment spiked to preserve a record — just in case Raven needed some ... ah, _encouragement_ later. “I sent links to everyone’s personal sites while Bell and I were watching what was going on in here, waiting for our cue.”

With her last words her cheerful geek mode drained away. She shut down her PDA and put it back in its pocket, and turned to her sister. “Urd, are you _really_ sure about this?”

Urd, finding herself suddenly too choked up to speak, simply nodded.

The youngest Norn stepped over and embraced her half-sister. “We’re gonna miss you,” she whispered.

Urd reflected that it was certainly turning out to be a banner day for hugs as she returned the embrace, uncaring of possible oil stains on her own (in her opinion) stylishly sexy outfit. “Easy, Squirt, I’ll still be your sister, and we’ll still see each other,” she assured her. “So long as Raven lives, I’ll be living with Lind and Mara where we have been — we told our baby we’d still be there if she needed us.”

“But even if she beats the Devourer that’ll only be a few decades, a century at most. And even before then, it won’t be the same.”

“No, it won’t, but that’s life — nothing stays the same forever, even for us.”

Urd looked up at her middle sister, and Belldandy nodded her agreement, her own eyes bright with unshed tears. “Urd is right, Skuld,” she said softly, “and we need to get started. I need to be home in a few hours for when the children get out of school.”

Urd felt Skuld’s nod against her shoulder, then the raven-haired goddess reluctantly released her. “Right, let’s do it.”

/\

Mara staggered as the light faded, and Hild and Kami-sama let go of her hands and stepped away. Before Urd could step forward to steady her, the former demon steadied herself, then spun in place with her arms stretched out wide, the previously red elongated slashes and double-triangles on her forehead and cheeks now glowing blue. “This is _incredible_!” she caroled. “I feel light as a feather.”

“It’s the lack of anger that all demons carry everywhere with them — though most that bother to think about it consider it to be a source of strength, not a burden,” Hild said, smiling at the antics of her now-former lackey.

“Urd, why didn’t they offer this to you?” Mara asked.

“It was suggested, I refused,” Urd said.

“Yes, I remember the official complaint that little incident resulted in,” Kami-sama commented. “The language you used on your unfortunate tutor went well beyond intemperate into purely demonic.”

Urd blushed. “I was new, still learning!” she protested.

“Yes, and you learned very well, only with a different tutor. Several different tutors now that I think on it, you chased away a few,” Kami-sama teased to accompanying chuckles and giggles.

Urd’s blush turned fiery. “I am what I am, if they couldn’t deal with it, then they could take their arrogant smirky attitudes and —” She broke off, and the chuckles and giggles turned into laughter as her blush actually darkened even further to almost purple. She finally shrugged with a wry grin.

A gently smiling Kami-sama waited until the laughter died away, then said, “Urd, it’s your turn.”

As a new, intricate ceremonial pattern flared to silver life around her and Mara, and Hild and Kami-sama took positions on opposite sides of the outer circle, Urd took a deep breath and turned to her sisters. “Bell? Skuld?”

Her sisters instantly sobered. Bell walked over to join Mara and Urd, but Skuld paused long enough to hand her PDA to Lind. She pointed at two glowing buttons out of the multitude that covered its top side. “The first one activates the view function for Raven’s tracker, the second turns off the emotions spike alert I mentioned. Do _not_ push any of the other buttons.” When Lind nodded, she joined Mara and her sisters, Mara and Urd gripping each other’s hands and Belldandy with her hands on their shoulders.

As soon as Skuld placed her own hands on Mara and Urd’s shoulders, Kami-sama and Hild raised their arms and the light of the pattern centered around the four seemed to solidify into glowing walls reaching to the ceiling. First Urd, then Belldandy and finally Skuld lifted their voices in wordless chorus and the room seemed to fill with the glory and pain of all that had gone into the rise of the ugly-beautiful-terrible-magnificent human race, and all the dire, glorious possibilities that lay before it.

For long minutes Mara listened, until she felt compelled to add her own soaring thread to the timeless song, weaving among the other threads to wrap itself around and merge with Urd’s deep foundational base until they were indistinguishable, their combined volume almost drowning out the other two voices.

With that merger Urd slowly lowered the volume of her own voice, and with the diminishing sound she felt her connection to the length and breadth of history — the solid foundation that had given a young demon-raised hybrid the calming strength she’d needed to give her divine side free rein — fade and finally vanish with her ended song as if it had never been. Even as the soaring tripartite song of life continued without her, she lifted Mara’s hands to join them with her sisters’ hands on her shoulders, then let go and stepped away from the three Norns into a world that suddenly seemed infinitely smaller than it had only a little while before.

With Urd’s separation, the Norns reversed the beginning of their song — first Skuld, then Belldandy, and finally Mara bringing each thread of their song to an end. In the ringing silence the walls of light sank into the glowing pattern surrounding them. Then the pattern vanished, and it was over.

For a long minute everyone in the room stood in place in awe of the music of the Norns in their full glory, even Skuld and Belldandy stunned at the impact of the rare full joining. Lind was frozen in place, tears streaming down her face and Skuld’s PDA in her hand dangling forgotten at her side. Mara stared into empty space, overwhelmed by her new connection to the whole of humanity’s past. And Urd was struggling to accept the massive hole in her soul.

Finally, Hild shook herself out of her daze, glanced over at Kami-sama, and nodded toward Mara. He nodded and walked over to his new Norn and placed a hand on her forehead. After a moment, she drew in a shuddering breath and her wide eyes focused on his face. “Easy,” he murmured, “I know it is a lot to take in all at once. The block I just placed will fade as you adjust.” Mara jerked a nod, then looked over with concern at Urd.

As Kami-sama took care of his newest goddess, Hild stepped over beside Urd, lifting a hand to gently grip her daughter’s shoulder. “It’s been so long since I had heard the Norns’ full lifesong in all its glory that I’d forgotten what I was asking you to give up. I’m sorry.”

Urd reached up to place a hand on her mother’s as she smiled reassuringly at her lover now looking at her. (Yes, she decided, she and Mara were well past the ‘friends with benefits’ stage.) “Don’t be,” she said. “I knew what I was giving up, and I didn’t do it for you — I did it for Raven, and all those like her.” Sucking in a deep breath, she continued, “And we aren’t quite done, there’s still World of Elegance to take care of. Mara, are you ready?”

Mara opened her mouth to ask once more if Urd was _sure_ , paused as she took in her lover’s tight, determined expression, and finally agreed with a simple nod.

Unlike the transfer of Domain they had just performed, transferring an Angel was deceptively simple. Urd focused on the other life dwelling at the core of her being, stepped over to Mara and with one finger tilted her head up for a gentle kiss, visualized that life shifting from her core through their lips into Mara — and instantly realized something was wrong. It hadn’t worked. She stepped back, confused. “Wh-what? Why ... ?”

“Why didn’t it work?” her Father said. She looked over to find him smiling. “You forgot something, Urd, to check if World of Elegance was willing to be transferred — your angels may exist to serve you, but they are not automatons. They have wills of their own, that can be as strong as any goddess. Usually, that will is in accordance with their gods and goddesses, but not always.”

Urd stared at her Father for a moment, then focused inward. _World of Elegance?_ Instantly, her Angel sprang forth, unique among Angels with her hair raven-dark on one side and platinum blonde on the other, the feathered wings extending from the back of her shoulders split to match her hair, and swirls of black running along her arms and down her back and sides, circling her torso before vanishing into the twisting ribbons of light and power that connected her to her mistress. She twisted around and looked down to face Urd, face stern and arms crossed.

“World of Elegance, please, you _have_ to accept Mara,” Urd begged. “She’ll love you as much as I do, and she needs help.”

World of Elegance shook her head.

“But I’ll be bringing my demonic side to the fore. If you stay with me, you’ll Sleep. If you go with Mara, we’ll at least be able to see each other sometimes.”

Again, World of Elegance shook her head, and stretched out one wing — the one covered by black feathers. Uncrossing her arms, she ran her hands along the black swirls running along the surface of her otherwise unblemished skin.

_Oh, right, World of Elegance shares my nature,_ Urd thought. “Okay, so you wouldn’t Sleep, but what I’m going to be involved in ... what I’m going to do ... it’s going to get ugly, I don’t want you to have to be a part of it!”

World of Elegance finally smiled, then leaned down to add another hug to Urd’s total for the day. After a minute she pushed herself back to arm’s length, looked Urd in the eye, and still smiling, gently shook her head once again.

Kami-sama spoke from where he’d been watching the exchange. “You might as well give up, Urd. People that love you won’t always do what you want _because_ they love you, and her will is as strong as yours.”

Urd sighed, shoulders slumping, then finally returned her Angel’s smile with one of pure relief. “I’d be happier for your sake if you chose to accept Mara,” she told her, “but I won’t pretend that having you with me won’t be a comfort.”

World of Elegance’s smile broadened, then she let go of Urd’s shoulders, leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead, and spun around to once more withdraw into her mistress.

Urd pressed her hand to the bare flesh of her chest between her breasts, left bare by the typical plunging — not to say plummeting — neckline of her dress. Closing her eyes for a moment, she luxuriated in the sense of her Angel inside. Her link with all of human history might be gone, but her center wouldn’t be left completely empty.

Opening her eyes again, she looked around, focused for a moment on Skuld — or more particularly the pocket into which her little sister was slipping the PDA she’d just reclaimed from Lind — then again on her parents and asked, “Are we done here? Because, no offense but with my and Mara’s crash training starting tomorrow —” she cocked an eyebrow at Hild and especially Kami-sama “— I’d like to get our links set up to Skuld’s bug and then spend the rest of the day with my co-mothers.”

Her parents exchanged glances. Hild spoke up first. “I’d arranged with Urd to start her training as soon as Raven finished remembering the last of her previous life, but that was before we learned of Raven’s plans, such as they were.”

Kami-sama nodded his agreement. “And while Mara will need to be brought up to speed on her new Domain and the details on the role it plays as quickly as possible, a few days — or even weeks — shouldn’t make that much of a difference.” Turning back to Mara and Urd, he said, “You two keep an eye on your daughter until she’s settled, then begin your training — all three of you. Lind, I’ll pass the word that you’re off the schedule.” At the relieved looks the three sent him, he added, “None of you will be able to focus on anything else until she’s safe anyway, not for long. You three jointly decide when you’re ready to come back to work.”

Urd stepped over to kiss him on the cheek, and had just turned to her co-mothers when an electronic tone sounded from Skuld’s pocket. Instantly, her PDA was out of her pocket, the virtual keyboard and screen were out, and she was typing furiously.

“Whoa, something serious is going on,” she said, eyes fixed on the charts and reports. “Spikes of fear and anger, frustration, concern, excitement ... not Raven, that’s what she’s picking up. She’s concerned and ... excited? What’s going on?”

“Well, Squirt, why don’t we look and find out?” Urd commented dryly.

Skuld blushed. “Oh, right, got too focused on the data....” She touched a blinking button, and the holographic display she’d demonstrated earlier sprang up to show Raven standing in an alley peeking around the corner, the light dimmed to that of a nighttime city. Skuld frowned. “Nothing there to cause all the fuss....” She typed for a few seconds, and the display shifted to the middle of the room, expanded, and the point of view shifted in the direction that Raven was looking, lifted, and rotated to look down.

“Whoa, who are the extras?” Urd asked.

Lind frowned. “I don’t recognize the girl tearing up the city, the green-skinned boy or the husky mechanical, but the black and yellow cape is Robin, Batman’s sidekick. But I don’t see his mentor anywhere.”

Mara elbowed the Valkyrie in the side, though her gaze remained fixed on the display. “And who’s Batman?” she asked.

“Vigilante, the best in the world — the drive of a Fury and the heart of a Valkyrie,” Lind replied. “Skuld, why did you send Raven to Gotham City?”

“I didn’t, I sent her to Jump City, on the west coast of the U.S.,” the youngest Norn replied. After a few quick seconds of typing, she added, “And she’s still there.”

Lind’s frown deepened. “Okay, so Robin’s far from home and apparently alone. I wonder what hap —”

She fell silent as their daughter abruptly abandoned her bystander role.

/oOo\

_Dawn, the following morning:_

On the tiny island where the alien thugs that had come hunting their escaped slave, the alien princess Starfire, had planted the immense holographic projector with which they’d threatened the city, Raven stood watching the early morning light flood across Jump City as the sun rose over the hills to the east. The sunrise was only slightly dimmed by the smoke from the fires sparked by their fight first with Starfire and then with the slavers.

It had been quite a night — a night like Raven had never known but _Ranma_ had; full of misunderstandings, uneasy alliances, massive property damage, and the thrill of combat that she hadn’t known in over fifteen years even if it was as faded ... unfocused ... as the rest of her emotions. For a time she had even been able to forget that she was going to destroy the entire world and kill everyone that lived on it. She wondered yet again what her Grandfather was thinking, insisting that she not be killed, or kill herself.

“Please, do I look ... nice?”

Raven turned at the sound of Starfire’s voice. The fiery-haired, orange-skinned warrior princess’s tone now sounded soft, gentle ... what Raven thought was probably her more natural tone rather than the rage and frustration had filled her voice when she had crash-landed in the city — that she had used to hide her bone-deep fear and despair. A fear and despair that had now faded into an uncertain hope. She had removed the armor she had been wearing, except for a neckguard and bracers around her forearms, and was now dressed in purple boots reaching up to mid-thigh, and a purple sleeveless top and miniskirt that left her midriff bare.

Behind Raven the boys instantly agreed that Starfire did indeed look ‘nice’, not to say drop dead kissably gorgeous. Raven was surprised to realize that she was adding her own hint of lust to the emotional atmosphere, mixing with Robin’s, the half-man/half-machine Black teenager Cyborg’s and the small, green-skinned, shapeshifting Beast Boy’s. Not that Robin wasn’t an attractive hunk, and didn’t _that_ still feel odd? (An image of Rothgan’s seemingly-diseased, sweat-shiny, tentacled bulk looming over her, the feel of the tentacles he used for arms crawling over her naked, muck-encrusted body flashed into her mind, causing her breath to hitch for a moment before she thrust the memory away — the one good thing about her broken mind was that ignoring those ugly flashbacks had become _much_ easier.)

When she was again aware of the world around her, Robin was speaking. “When you first suggested we team up, I said I work alone now,” he was telling Beast Boy. “I think I’ve changed my mind. How would you all like to join me in a new team? Our own miniature Justice League right here in Jump City.” His eyes swept across the other teens. They perhaps paused for a split-second on Raven and Starfire — not enough to be really noticeable, but his emotions might as well have been shouting. _He’s actually worried about us, giving up his new lone wolf status for us,_ Raven thought. _That’s rather sweet._

“Yeah? Nice idea, but where we gonna stay?” the bulky Cyborg asked (though muscular where he wasn’t machine; not bouncing, undulating fat like Rothgan). “The Justice League has its base and planes and everything, and we’ve got what, the local pizza parlor?”

“Hey, dude, what’s wrong with a pizza parlor?” Beast Boy demanded. “Vegetarian and tofu pizza is cool!”

Everyone stared at the shapeshifter for a moment, before Robin said, “Money won’t be an issue, I ... have connections. I should be able to get us a place to stay while our headquarters is being built — right on this island, I think, close enough for easy access to the city while isolated enough to keep down the property damage and risk to innocent bystanders when enemies come calling. So who’s with me?”

Starfire was the first to speak up. “I would be delighted to take part in such a marvelous adventure!” she enthused, eyes fixed on Robin ... and the orange of her cheeks turning slightly darker.

Robin’s cheeks went a little pink as well, and he hastily looked at the others.

“Sure, I’m in!” Beast Boy almost shouted.

Cyborg shrugged. “Why not? Not like I have anything else to do, now.”

Raven had turned away and was just gathering her energies for the flight to the mainland, when Robin asked, “And what about you, Raven?”

She paused. It was tempting, but ... “I’d better not,” she said finally, voice barely audible. “If you knew what I was, you wouldn’t want me around.”

“I know enough,” Robin instantly disagreed. “I know you involved yourself in a fight that wasn’t yours, just because others needed help. I would be proud to fight beside you.”

“Please, friend Raven, join us,” Starfire added. “I would like to have a female friend in this new world.”

Cyborg and Beast Boy added their own encouragement, but by then Raven wasn’t listening, her thoughts turned inward. Sure, they’d learn what she was sooner or later and she’d be on her own again, but in the meantime ... she’d actually had fun that night, and while it wouldn’t make any difference a few years down the line they’d saved lives — given people that much longer to enjoy life before the end. And after the emotional hell she’d been immersed in for the past year and the uneasiness of everyone that had noticed her as she’d walked about the city, Starfire’s sweet uncertainty ( _definitely_ not the berserker she’d pretended to be at first), Robin’s calm certitude, Beast Boy’s perky cheerfulness, even Cyborg’s mixture of anger, despair and hope were soothing to her soul. _And it would make my mothers happy._

Finally, almost reluctantly, she turned back around. “All right, I’m in ... for now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know I skipped the whole fight between the nascent Teen Titans and the Gordanian slavers. I'm kinda two minds about that. On the one hand, there's the jump past the whole action sequence, and this sequel has been all drama/no action. On the other hand the action is a bit of a sideshow, since the major themes of the story have been how Urd ends up where she does and how Raven ends up with the personality of the Raven of the Teen Titans, and since this is the Raven of the Teen Titans it would essentially be a novelization of the cartoon. Originally I was going to have the story end where Raven involves herself in the first fight with Starfire, but some of the reviews at made clear not everyone has seen Teen Titans at all or read the comics, and I decided that not skipping to the end of the origin episode might leave them confused. And it gave me a chance to tweak a few things about the origin episode that I thought made it clear that it was the pilot episode and they changed a few things when they decided to shelve it till fifth season.
> 
> For the transference of Urd's Domain, the OMG! manga doesn't really make it clear how the Norns ended up the Norns, at least not so's I remember it. But what is fairly clear is that, however much Fujishima is dipping into Norse myth for inspiration, this is not a polytheistic setup, and areas of expertise are the result of inclination and training, not birth as is typical in polytheisms. For example, Lind is a Valkyrie through personality, desire and training. In the latest OMG! book published (in the US, anyway, vol. 41), it was revealed that Belldandy, of all people, has successfully completed the training to be a Valkyrie even if the chances of her ever actually being one are slim to nil. So for the Norns, I'm going with the idea that each is an assigned Domain, like being a Valkyrie, but requires a very high level of trust among the three, which is why in this case the three ended up being sisters. But they don't have to be.
> 
> For the chapter title, I'd actually come up with a number of song titles to use: "The Pearl" by Emmylou Harris, "Serenity" by Godsmack, "You Learn" by Alanis Morissette, "Streets of Philadelphia" or "We Take Care of Our Own" by Bruce Springsteen, "Health to the Company" by Blackmore's Night, but in the end I settled on going with "Rocky Ground" from Bruce Springsteen's latest album. A number of videos are available on YouTube, though my favorite is the one uploaded by theilster. Then when I spung this off into a separate story I decided it was perfect for the story title as well.

**Author's Note:**

> So, on to what was going to be the epilogue and is essentially Part Two. A large part of the reasons for the scene creep was Urd. I could have probably gotten away with a massive scene jump if I'd stuck to Raven, where she ends up is pretty much set in canon, but Urd is another matter and where she ends up takes more explication.
> 
> The story title comes from the song by the same name from Bruce Springsteen's latest album:
> 
> Rise up shepherd, rise up  
> Your flock has roamed far from the hills  
> The stars have faded, the sky is still  
> The angels are shouting "Glory Hallelujah" 
> 
> We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground  
> We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground 
> 
> Forty days and nights of rain have washed this land  
> Jesus said the money changers in this temple will not stand  
> Find your flock, get them to higher ground  
> Flood waters rising and we're Caanan bound 
> 
> We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground  
> We've been traveling over rocky ground, rocky ground 
> 
> Tend to your flock or they will stray  
> We'll be called for our service come Judgment Day  
> Before we cross that river wide  
> Blood on our hands will come back on us twice 
> 
> Rise up shepherd, rise up  
> Your flock has roamed far from the hills  
> Stars have faded, the sky is still  
> Sun's in the heavens and a new day's rising 
> 
> You use your muscle and your mind and you pray your best  
> That your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest  
> You raise your children and you teach 'them to walk straight and sure  
> You pray that hard times, hard times, come no more  
> You try to sleep, you toss and turn, the bottom's dropping out  
> Where you once had faith now there's only doubt  
> You pray for guidance, only silence now meets your prayers  
> The morning breaks, you awake but no one's there


End file.
